The companies establishing renewable energy production facilities are helping to grow educational programs and provide a path toward gainful employment for locals.
That statement sounds like it could be taken straight from the fact sheet of a renewable developer’s media portfolio. Is everything the developers are doing in this Valley at the moment out of the goodness of their hearts? Absolutely not.
Most of what is occurring with paying public benefit fees to the county, with establishing educational endowments or partnering with school districts is about good public relations and becoming well-respected community members.
Great. The Imperial Valley could use a little of the warm and fuzzy byproducts of the companies looking to make a buck in the renewable industry.
We don’t see anything wrong with that. In fact, what we do see is their outreach and PR having positive effects on the future of many local students. It doesn’t matter how it’s occurring, the point it is occurring.
This past Sunday we reported on the efforts of 8Minutenergy Renewables to help fund Calipatria Unified School District’s new renewable energy vocational program, even giving hiring preference to Calipatria students who have successfully completed the program.
Separately, LS Power, which broke ground on its Centinela Solar Energy Facility, donated $135,000 in scholarships to Imperial Valley University Partnership between Imperial Valley College and San Diego State University-Imperial Valley campus, and then started a $50,000 endowment for IVC’s President’s Scholarship Fund.
For more than a year, local renewable energy companies either building or planning to build plants have been making inroads with local educational institutions. And while some of it is that PR we referred to, a good degree of it is a need for a better-educated workforce needed for some of that mid-level, non-engineering work needed at many of the facilities once they become reality.
While assuring a local workforce will always be a challenge, and we know questions have already arisen during the construction phase of some of the solar fields, the reality is we do not have the training in place or the trained people.
It’s our hope these partnerships can put that right, that our high school, vocational education and college graduates will have a shot at careers in renewable energy. Will these partnerships be the solutions? Probably not, but they will be a piece of an emerging puzzle.
THE ISSUE:
Renewable energy companies help bankroll education.
WE SAY:
The programs make a positive impact on local students.
WHAT DO YOU SAY?
Send us your thoughts on this topic to www.ivpressonline.com/letterstotheeditor
To comment on this story click here to be directed to Facebook.
