White House Council on Environmental Quality Visits Mason Tenders' Training Center

On January 15, 2010, White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) Chair Nancy Sutley spent a day in the field to see weatherization efforts in New York City. Part of her visit included a tour of the Mason Tenders' Training Center, a green jobs training site in Long Island City (Queens), New York. The training center offers the Laborers' International Union of North America's (LIUNA) Weatherization Training Program, a skills-based course that teaches workers how to retrofit homes for better energy efficiency, and helps connect them to jobs in the field.

Mason Tenders' training center was among the first to offer LIUNA Training's comprehensive Weatherization program. Weatherization is a new field with increasing demand and the potential to save millions of barrels of foreign oil and put people back to work in their community while equipping them with skills for the future.

In addressing a weatherization technician training class, Sutley said,

"You are definitely a part of the change. This is an exciting field with a lot of opportunity. From the President on down, we think there is a great future for our communities to benefit from the work you are doing here."

She viewed the Center's teaching tools, including a multi-layered residential wall replica, and listened to students describe their training program and classes. The students presented Sutley with an inscribed hard hat, and a second one for President Obama.

During a news interview at the Center's hands-on training area, she further commented on new opportunities,

"People in Queens and around the city can take advantage of these training programs. It's really important to get people familiar with these types of skills and into this new growth opportunity in jobs. It's important for them to have the kind of training they're getting here."

She toured the site, visited a weatherization technician training class, and attended a luncheon with the training center director and staff, local government and community representatives, and LIUNA Training managers.

Sutley's visit also included a stakeholder luncheon with the training center director and staff, local government and community representatives, and LIUNA Training managers to discuss the collaborations that are already working on retrofit efforts and how they could be an instrument of economic change nationally. With almost 130 million homes in the US, responsible for more than 20 percent of the nation's carbon dioxide emissions, the opportunity to make them up to 40 percent more efficient through retrofits will lower greenhouse gas emissions as well as save Americans money on their power bills. CEQ brought back valuable models of success from New York which will inform its ongoing exploration of retrofits on a national scale. During her visit, Chair Sutley indicated a robust home energy efficiency sector is an important part of realizing President Obama's vision of a clean energy economy.