Partnership
The Labor Energy Partnership (LEP) is uniting climate and labor priorities in a shared vision for a low-carbon future that uplifts families and communities. To achieve this, the LEP develops innovative, technically sound, place-based solutions to the climate crisis that are rooted in social and economic justice and create and sustain high-quality, union jobs.
AFL-CIO
The AFL-CIO works tirelessly to improve the lives of working people. We are the democratic, voluntary federation of 57 national and international labor unions that represent 12.5 million working men and women. We strive to ensure all working people are treated fairly, with decent paychecks and benefits, safe jobs, dignity, and equal opportunities. We help people acquire valuable skills and job readiness for the 21st century economy.
Energy Futures Initiative
The Energy Futures Initiative, an independent. nonprofit research organization, advances solutions to the climate crisis through building coalitions, thought leadership, and evidence-based analysis. Under the leadership of former Secretary of Energy Ernest J. Moniz, EFI analysis is widely published and publicly available. EFI’s mission: Harness the power of innovation to build a secure, affordable, low-carbon energy future.
How We Were Founded
Industrial transitions have rarely been smooth. They have been typically marked by community and worker dislocations with significant regional disparities, disproportionate impacts on minority communities, and the fraying of existing social institutions, including public education systems, local government services, unions, and even religious organizations.
Whether technology or policy-driven, the US has had an uneven track record of managing industrial transitions in ways that provided the impacted employees and their communities with the tools and resources to rebuild.
Today’s transition to a low carbon economy is being enabled by the growing competitiveness of new technologies and will be shaped by trade agreements and other public policies, but these are not its primary causes. The origins of this transition are grounded in the need to address the existential threat of climate change and will be driven in large part by public actions, programs, policies, and investments designed and implemented by federal and state governments to regulate and subsidize the growth of low carbon technologies.
It is the duty and obligation of policymakers to embrace solutions to industrial dislocation as fundamental to a clean energy economy transition’s design and implementation, technological evaluation, and how regions and localities are supported.
On Earth Day, 2020, the AFL-CIO and the Energy Futures Initiative announced the formation of the Labor Energy Partnership (LEP). Together, we have launched a multi-decadal effort to create a clean energy economy that is more equitable for all Americans and can be sustained across our diversity of political views, regional differences, and economic challenges for the next thirty years.
Guiding Principles
Energy policy must be based on solid scientific review that acknowledges that climate change is real, anthropogenic, and represents an existential threat to human society.
Guiding Principles
Successful social solutions to climate change must be based on an “all-of-the above” energy source strategy that is regionally focused, flexible, preserves optionality, and addresses the crisis of stranded workers.
Guiding Principles
An essential priority of all climate policy solutions is the preservation of existing jobs, wherever possible, and the creation of new ones that are equal to or better than those that are displaced.
Guiding Principles
Climate policy represents an economic opportunity to the United States when the benefits of new technology deployment result in the creation of quality jobs and the creation of competitive domestic supply chains.
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The Partnership Team
The Labor Energy Partnership is bringing together some of our movements’ most renowned climate experts and labor leaders.
What We Do
Our team is developing timely and comprehensive products, events, and tools laser-focused on building a clean energy future with working people at the center. Explore some of our most recent work.
