Listen to this article
When they’re not studying hydraulic systems, electric motors and coastal ecology, the inaugural class of a first-of-its-kind community college program will be diving into a swamp, climbing towers and hanging from ropes more than 50 feet in the air. .
This fall, Nunez Community College in Chalmette will launch a two-year program that trains students as entry-level turbine technicians for the growing wind energy sector. Graduates will be equipped to work high in the sky and offshore, supporting the development of planned offshore wind farms in the Gulf of Mexico.
“It’s definitely a lot of hands-on training,” said Jacqueline Richard, manager of the Núñez Coastal Studies Program. “It’s very practical because we want people to be as employable as possible.”
Nunez is the first college or university in Louisiana to offer a degree program related to wind energy and the first community college in the Southeast to offer an associate degree focused on wind energy, Richard said.
The program is aimed at young people looking to start a career and experienced oil and gas industry workers who want to broaden their horizons.
“Throughout the entire (oil and gas) supply chain, there are a lot of transferable skills,” said Matheus Chagas, renewable energy project manager at Grand Isle Shipyard, a Louisiana company that has long worked on the oil and gas industry but is expanding into the offshore sector. wind. “All the services we have implemented for oil and gas can be implemented for offshore wind.”
While Louisiana has long tied its economy and identity to fossil fuel extraction, these resources are finite and job prospects are declining. Burning oil and gas also releases greenhouse gases, contributing to sea level rise, intensifying hurricanes and other climate change-related dangers.
“The wind will always be here, while fossil fuels won’t,” Richard said. “It brings energy to our state in a sustainable way.”
The program offers free tuition to this year’s cohort of 20 students, who could earn much more than Louisiana’s median income of $50,000 once they graduate.
“The starting salary with this type of technical diploma is $60,000,” Richard said. “It puts students on a fantastic path with little debt.”
Other Louisiana schools also offer pathways in the wind energy sector. Late last year, the University of New Orleans announced the first five engineering students in its inaugural Wind Energy Hub academic program. Each student receives a $5,000 scholarship and a paid internship at German wind energy developer RWE or a Louisiana company that has helped build wind farms or support vessels, such as Cut Off’s Edison Chouest Offshore and Mandeville’s Keystone Engineering.
Núñez hopes to link his program to that of the ONU, allowing two-year graduates to seamlessly transition to the larger school and eventually earn a four-year degree.
Wet and climb
Courses in Núñez’s program range from environmental science and engineering and technical repair classes to field safety training that replicates work at onshore and offshore wind farms.
“They will be submerged in the water and rescued at Bayou Bienvenue,” Richard said of a planned water safety course near Lake Borgne. “We didn’t want to do it in a crystal-clear pool because that’s not what the Gulf of Mexico is like.”
Students will also practice working from heights with ropes and other safety equipment.
Scholarships for the program, which are equivalent to one full trip for the first class, were funded by the Gulf Research Program of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.
Núñez developed his curriculum with Energy Innovation, a wind energy education and training center in Norway. The center trained and certified Núñez instructors in Egersund, Norway, late last year.
“Rather than recreate the academic wheel, we decided to partner with someone who has already laid it all out,” Richard said.
In April, the program passed an audit and inspection by the Global Wind Organization, the main sanctioning body for the wind energy industry. The GWO seal of approval means that graduates of the program will be qualified to enter the wind energy workforce in the U.S. and abroad.
wind workforce
The United States’ first large-scale offshore wind project began operating off the coast of New York in March, and two larger projects are under construction near Massachusetts.
The New York wind farm and some smaller projects on the East Coast add up to about 240 megawatts of US offshore wind capacity.
Federal energy regulators are preparing for a second offshore lease sale in the Gulf after the first attracted only one bid last year. RWE’s winning proposal aims to build a wind farm near Lake Charles in the coming years. Two smaller wind projects are planned near Port Fourchon and Cameron Parish in Louisiana-managed waters, which extend three miles offshore.
The pace of offshore wind construction is far behind the Biden administration’s goal of generating at least 30,000 megawatts by the end of the decade. The reasons are varied: supply chain delays, high interest rates and rising inflation.
A lack of trained workers has also been a factor, according to research from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which recently estimated the U.S. offshore wind workforce at fewer than 1,000 people. To meet the administration’s goals, the industry would need to hire 43,000 more workers and add 33,000 people in support services, according to NREL.
“Skilled trades are some of the most important positions for the offshore wind industry,” said NREL researcher Jeremy Stefek. “It represents a pretty big gap that will need to be filled for the industry to grow.”
Louisiana companies with roots in the offshore oil and gas industry have been applying their offshore expertise to the wind industry for nearly a decade. Six Louisiana companies provided marine designers, engineers, ship operators and welders to help build America’s first offshore wind farm, a five-turbine project off Rhode Island, in 2016.
Nearly a quarter of all U.S. offshore wind job contracts have gone to Gulf-based companies, with around $1 billion in investments flowing into the region’s shipyards and yards in recent years, according to Oceantic Network, an industry trade group.
Meanwhile, the oil and gas industry’s role in Louisiana has been shrinking. The number of jobs in the oil and gas sector has fallen by approximately half over the last decade. The industry now employs less than 2% of the state’s workforce.
Richard said the loss of these well-paying jobs, many of which were accessible to people with little more than a high school diploma, has been painful in many communities, including St. Bernard Parish, where Nunez resides. The parish’s poverty rate has risen from 14% to nearly 23% over the past two decades.
“We’re trying to support pathways to good-paying jobs that don’t require four years of college,” Richard said. “This is a generational investment that our students and perhaps some of their children can take advantage of.”
This article first appeared on Verite News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Keynote USA
For the Latest Local News, Follow Keynote USA Local on Twitter.