EnerBlü, a company that makes rechargeable lithium batteries for mainline energy grids, microgrids, and electric cars, has transplanted its headquarters from Riverside in southern California to Lexington, the western edge of what used to be the heart of Kentucky coal operations. That will also be the site of its research and development center.
But there is a bigger, potentially more important project coming from the high-tech company: the establishment of Energy Innovation Park in Pikeville, on the eastern border of Kentucky, where 37 Appalachia counties are mired in economic stress, as bad or worse off than the bottom 10 percent of America’s 3,113 counties. The $400 million, million-square-foot EIP operation, located on the site of the former Marion Branch coal mine, will feature four manufacturing facilities, including a lithium battery factory.
Daniel Elliott, EnerBlü president and CEO, stated in a May 2 press release on the company’s website: “Geotechnical work continues and is progressing on schedule. We are close to awarding the prime contractor for the [Pikeville] manufacturing campus project, which will employ up to 875 workers, including engineers and chemists with BS or advanced degrees.”
Appalachian Kentucky suffered from a poverty rate in 2011 to 2015 of 25.8 percent, compared to 15.5 percent nationally, and a per capita market income in the region in 2015 of $19,204 compared with a national level of $39,778. The area has lost about 10,000 coal-mining jobs since 2011, plus jobs servicing the industry, and there’s no chance coal is coming back despite the Trump regime’s bogus promises.
EnerBlü considered other areas, but it chose Pikeville because of available land, more than $27 million in government incentives, partnerships with colleges and universities, and most importantly, according to a company release in March:
Eastern Kentucky and the Pikeville area offers us a trained, highly skilled, and available workforce with strong understanding of Direct Current (“DC”) power, complex machinery, and robotics operations in production environments. It also provides robust military support and veterans for employment. The area is rooted in the challenging coal industry, which leads to a population with a strong work ethic, perseverance, loyalty, tenacity, dedication, and broad and transferable skill sets.
With barely 50,000 jobs left in coal mining today nationwide and no end in sight for the long-standing downward trend, the image of Appalachia is one of appalling poverty, bigoted political views, and eternal hopelessness. The stereotype has it that, even when offered a way out, coal miners and former coal miners just want to roll back the clock to when hard and exceedingly dangerous but reasonably well-paying jobs could be had even for people without an education. But at least part of that is a myth.
Jim Marston, Vice President of the Environmental Defense Fund's Clean Energy program, noted in a blog post on Tuesday:
Struggling coal mining towns offer an abundance of highly trained workers, many of whom are eager for new opportunities and stable jobs. Mine work today requires mechanical and technical skills that are transferable to new industries, a fact that companies inside and outside the energy sector are beginning to discover in America’s tightening labor market. [...]
Dan Conant, the young founder of Solar Holler in West Virginia partnered with a non-profit to train people in coal field communities for new careers in an unexpected business: rooftop solar installation.
So far, at least 30 people under the age of 25 have gone through the program. Many are the sons and daughters of coal workers who are looking for new opportunities in a growth industry, Conant said. Sollar Holler has also trained several former coal workers who, with freshly minted technician skills, can now find openings in West Virginia’s budding solar industry or anywhere in the United States.
Back in Pikeville, meanwhile, a start-up software and development company called BitSource has already hired nine former coal workers who had to show an interest in process, be logical thinkers and able to spend hours in front of a computer. Some of the miners BitSource hired had spent 20 years in the mine; now they code.
Miracles shouldn’t be expected, of course. Those nine workers and EnerBlü’s 875 need to be multiplied many times.
And, as Mark Hand at Think Progress points out:
Retraining workers often is a time-consuming and difficult process. According to study by the Hamilton Project, retraining programs must be highly targeted at the workers who will likely benefit. “That means younger workers with some postsecondary education who are motivated to follow through, and who are able and willing to relocate to places with more job opportunities. Many of the unemployed coal miners of Appalachia do not fit those criteria,” a 2016 MIT Technology Review article said.
So, it would, of course, be foolish to assume that a couple renewable energy companies can turn around the crumpled economy of an area once dependent on a single, now moribund industry. Or that people who have shown an ever greater penchant for voting bigoted right-wingers into power will switch their political allegiance overnight. But it’s a beginning, and offers a potential model for other parts of Appalachia as well as the rest of country that have so far not joined the energy revolution.