Capturing the wealth created in the green transition by making sure green jobs created in the process are owned by their workers.
Policy Support:
Ecosystem support (technical assistance, financing) for worker-owned cooperatives; forward-thinking CBA mechanisms that help direct business to worker-owned companies; prioritization of worker-owned cooperatives for contracts on sustainability projects at state, city, and anchor institution level.
Build Capacity?
Builds democratized economic power and opportunities for leadership development; establishes precedent for use of state support for democratized ownership.
Risk & Drawbacks?
Business development conditional on state subsidies can be fragile; business development wins take a long time to materialize; business development is inherently risky.
Inspiring Examples:
Evergreen Energy Solutions, part of the Evergreen Cooperatives in Cleveland, Ohio, is a worker-owned effort to create jobs in severely disinvested communities in both solar installation and energy efficiency retrofitting; Namasté Solar, with around 100 workers, is a B-Corporation and award-winning workplace in addition to a worker cooperative, and has installed over 25 MW of solar power systems since 2005.
