Aug 13, 2024
On Tuesday, August 13, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) launched a new video series spotlighting clean energy workers and the communities being transformed by historic clean energy investments.
The first video in this series, A New Iron Age, centers on Weirton, West Virginia, a historic steel town. After breaking ground in May 2023, Weirton will soon begin producing iron-air batteries to power homes and lower families’ energy bills.
The new facility is one of over 800 new or expanded clean energy manufacturing projects announced on American soil since the Biden-Harris Administration entered office.
President Biden and Vice President Harris have created nearly 16 million jobs since taking office. Hundreds of thousands of those jobs are in clean energy. From heavy equipment operators to autoworkers to pipe fitters to linemen, hard-working Americans are powering this country and supporting their families with good-paying, quality jobs.
Visit www.energy.gov/invest to learn more.
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man look at this lift thing when we go
by so that lifts heavy heavy heavy
stuff turn around the bik so that
building the union trades built that we
built it from top to bottom form energy
came to us got a lot of Union
contractors what they'll do is they'll
make batteries out of iron or so that's
what that plant's going to supply is
batteries for housing pray for windmills
to make sense
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yeah I'm a West Virginia through and
through I started out traveling across
the United States bu coal preparation
plants my experiences go from working in
Coal Mines to steel mills but at the end
of the day we have to
diversify if you see this old building
and all these old buildings they used to
make steel here Weir and steel was once
West Virginia's largest employer it
employed 13,000 people and because of
that Community was built around those
opportunities weon was really a bustling
downtown because of the thousands of
people that worked at weon Steel
but for years steel had been declining
and we really tried to hold on it
shifted from many different companies
that own the steel mill and they kind of
decreased their product line and
eventually the final iteration of that
closed it's a much different place now
and I think we have to be poised to
think about future opportunities and
that's what these clean energy jobs are
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there are two big ways the government is
helping companies like form scale and
scale fast on one side grant funding and
we're already seeing some benefit from
that and then on the other side tax
credits it takes federal state and local
leadership to make a project like this
happen once we knew that the battery was
going to work we knew we had to go find
a place to make a heck of a lot of them
we were looking for a very highly
skilled Workforce weiron really stood
out to us they had this amazing site
that we're sitting on which is a former
steel mill and then it also had this
community of people that know how to
make things out of Iron and Steel and
have been doing it for
Generations right as the mill was
shutting down sitting on my
grandfather's porch on where Avenue
didn't know what was going to happen and
when I heard about this I knew that this
is a great opportunity to work on the
same grounds like my whole family came
from what drew me is to to take me back
into happy times I can think in my mind
of a family where they everybody worked
right up this road right here feels like
I'm part of the old culture the most
exciting and fulfilling parts of the
journey has been the demand for the jobs
that we're creating the average wage in
this Factory is going to be over
$63,000 per person these are going to be
good paying jobs that we're going to
offer to the community of weiron it ists
tell us that every single one of them
will make another two in the
community to see this new energy and all
this new stuff is is just awesome
because it's new technology new things
we're learning as we go along and and
we're always ready to meet the
demands look at the size of that sign
man look form energy look at the size of
it that's huge I know that's bigger than
your
bedroom after this investment and after
these new jobs are here I'm so excited
to see how catalytic that will be for
this region because those jobs will
breathe a little bit of life I think
into a community into a region that has
been waiting for this
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