This region is a place where hard work and innovation go hand in hand. For years, Western Pennsylvanian workers proudly built the steel that fueled America’s economy. Now we’re ready to do it again — and we have no time to waste.

While there’s been debate about the path forward, there’s one thing we know for certain: We’re in a climate emergency. The scientific consensus is clear: Climate change is caused by humans burning fossil fuels. We have to lower harmful greenhouse gas emissions that are warming global temperatures and worsening flooding and extreme weather in our region. And our communities need good, safe jobs along the way.

Western Pennsylvania boasts an extensive skilled workforce that can be utilized to build renewable energy infrastructure. We have an untapped opportunity to create local jobs, cut emissions and improve our homes, buildings and quality of life with widespread energy efficiency improvements. Our region has also emerged as a hub for sustainability research. We’re ready for clean energy solutions that are good for workers, good for families and good for our climate.

Now, we have a way to get there.

A new report by the Ohio River Valley Institute (ORVI) and Strategen is the first blueprint for Southwestern Pennsylvania to transition to a healthy and prosperous future through clean, proven, cost-effective renewable energy. The analysis details how a transition to renewables would boost employment, and reduce harmful, climate-damaging emissions more effectively and at a lower cost than other approaches still rooted in extraction — things like hydrogen energy and carbon capture.

Building out renewable energy resources and investing in the efficiency of our homes and buildings would bring tens of thousands of safe, family-sustaining jobs to Pennsylvanians, while protecting our families’ and children’s health by improving air quality. The path outlined in the report is a viable, feasible way to get where we know we need to get. It’s ambitious, saves families money, and produces big benefits and big emissions reductions.

To get there, we will need bold leadership. We have the technology, the spaces, the workers, the funding and certainly the need. We just need the political will.

The ORVI analysis details how widespread energy efficiency projects have the potential to create lots of jobs. And there’s huge potential to cut emissions through the region’s transportation and building sectors. Heavily electrifying them can cut those sectors’ emissions by 95% by 2050.

There’s also an opportunity for policymakers and local leaders to take advantage of federal funding and incentives, including those provided by the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

Other energy pathways proposed for the southwestern Pennsylvania region, such as those envisioned by the Allegheny Conference, the Roosevelt Project and the Labor Energy Partnership, rely on expensive, unproven carbon capture technology to sustain dirty gas-fired power plants and support costly blue hydrogen hubs subsidized by taxpayer dollars. Research shows that these approaches would produce little, if any, job growth and would fail to meet the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. In fact, we need to retire coal-fired power plants and most gas-fired plants by 2034 to meet that goal. Our leaders must focus on the proposals that invest in true clean energy strategies like renewables — which are cheap, safe and clean.

We’re ready for clean energy solutions that are good for workers, good for families and good for our climate. We can have a clean energy future that powers our lives at home and work, creates quality jobs with good wages — jobs from the trades or right out of high school — and frees us from fossil fuels. We also recognize the need to invest in workforce readiness and job retraining programs now to ensure no worker is left behind as we move to this clean energy future.

We can have a cleaner and safer future. We just need elected officials at all levels to invest in the solutions that will bring prosperity and wellness to our communities.

This op-ed was written Ohio River Valley Institute Executive Director Joanne Kilgour and co-signed by Pittsburgh City Council members Erika Strassburger, Deb Gross and Bobby Wilson, Allegheny County Council members Bethany Hallam (at large), Olivia “Liv” Bennett and Anita Prizio, and Pennsylvania state Reps. Dan Frankel and Sara Innamorato.

Copyright ©2025— Trib Total Media, LLC (TribLIVE.com)