Clean Energy is Economic Strategy
March 2026 | Written by Theresa and Danielle
This is the third post of our Economic Development series highlighting economic shifts in the region. Click “Rethinking Seattle’s Economic Resiliency” and “Seattle’s (Small Business) Affordability Crisis” to catch up on our first two posts.
For a long time, Washington has been at the forefront of the clean energy transition. With passage of legislation like the 2019 Clean Energy Transformation Act (CETA), Washington has been among a handful of states at the forefront of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But the clean energy transition isn’t just a climate issue. It’s about factories, ports, transmission lines, skilled trades, and massive capital flows looking for a home.
Clean energy is becoming the organizing principle of global industrial growth and regions that treat it like an economic strategy will capture the jobs and investment of the next generation. For Washington, this has been more challenging than should be the case for a state that boasts a thriving tech hub and deep commitment to clean energy.
Powering New Business with a Real Transmission Strategy
Power is now a primary site selection criterion. When manufacturers, data centers, clean fuel facilities, and electrified port operators evaluate Washington, they are asking a single threshold question: can you deliver reliable power at the scale we need, when we need it? Increasingly, the honest answer is uncertain - and uncertainty loses deals.
Washington's energy demand is on track to grow faster than the grid can currently accommodate, driven by electrification of transportation and buildings, population growth, and the arrival of energy-intensive industries. Generation alone won't close that gap. The binding constraint is transmission.
Transmission is the infrastructure that moves power from where it's generated (wind farms, solar installations, hydro facilities) to the communities and industrial sites that need it. Without sufficient transmission capacity, clean energy that exists on paper cannot reach the businesses and residents depending on it. Washington's existing transmission infrastructure is aging, making it both less reliable and more vulnerable. And by the state's own assessment, it falls short of what CETA requires (see links to further reading below).
Washington has a massive pipeline of clean energy projects and economic potential at risk. In a region like Seattle where tech innovation has been a major driving force of our economy over the last few decades, we can only maintain that competitive edge if we address the less glamorous, but arguably far more decisive drivers of the clean energy transition will make us less competitive compared to states like California and Texas that are taking on massive transmission projects to attract industrial growth. While other states are actively building their coalitions and drafting strategies, Washington is falling further behind. What’s holding Washington back? Permitting and siting. Washington’s complex permitting adds years to project timelines while local land-use conflicts on transmission projects create what feel like insurmountable roadblocks.
The economic consequence is direct: Washington cannot attract the energy-intensive industries driving the next wave of industrial growth if it cannot credibly guarantee power delivery. Transmission is not a technical footnote to the clean energy transition; it is the precondition for it. By quickly addressing these barriers and putting a coherent transmission strategy in place, Washington can unlock significant investment and job growth.
Workforce: The Foundation of Our Growth Strategy
Clean energy infrastructure doesn’t build itself. Behind every transmission line, solar installation, and hydrogen facility is a workforce made up of electricians, ironworkers, project engineers, grid operators, and construction managers. Washington has the talent ecosystem to supply that workforce. Whether we deploy that ecosystem in time is a choice the state has to make deliberately, and it starts with making cost of living more affordable.
A new report, Prices We Pay, developed by Kinetic West and Washington Roundtable, documents the scale of the affordability pressure already bearing down on Washington families and workers. Since 2015, per-person consumer spending in the state has increased nearly 55 percent. Between 2021 and 2023, Washington experienced a net loss of more than 55,000 residents, most of them leaving for states with significantly lower costs. Every worker who leaves the state because they cannot afford to stay is a worker unavailable for the clean energy jobs Washington is trying to create. Workforce and affordability strategy are not separate conversations.
If Washington were to invest in energy infrastructure required to meet CETA goals, by our estimates the electrical transmission workforce would need to grow upwards of 60 percent for some occupations, and more than 100 percent for others. That scale of growth will not happen organically or on short notice. It requires sustained investment in skilled trades training, apprenticeships, and career pathways that expand the pipeline of electricians, linemen, engineers, and construction professionals needed to deliver projects on time. Without a deliberate workforce strategy to match the infrastructure ambition, transmission investments will stall. And a good workforce strategy for the sector isn’t limited to skilled trades.
Significant workforce reductions in the tech sector have freed up a substantial pool of skilled workers whose capabilities, while not neatly matched to clean energy trades, are transferrable to several other roles needed for clean energy transition. Utilities and grid operators are increasingly software-driven, offering a natural placement for software engineers. Climate tech and industrial electrification will require engineers, data scientists, and product managers, similar profiles of talent laid off from big tech companies. But these transitions won’t happen without intention. The state's community and technical colleges, apprenticeship programs, and labor-management training partnerships represent the connective infrastructure that can bridge displaced tech workers and a new generation of trades entrants into the roles that clean energy development will require. But that infrastructure needs investment and coordination at a scale that has not yet materialized.
Washington's clean energy workforce opportunity is real, but it will not fill itself. States that pair infrastructure investment with deliberate workforce pipelines will capture the jobs. Those that treat workforce development as a downstream afterthought will watch the talent leave and the contracts go elsewhere.
Signals to Watch
Washington's clean energy and industrial future will not be decided by a single policy or a single election cycle. It will be decided by a series of choices made by legislators, utilities, regulators, employers, and educators that either compound into a coherent strategy or remain disconnected good intentions. Here are the signals worth watching:
Transmission permitting reform advances in Olympia. Legislation that consolidates siting authority, establishes priority corridors, or creates dedicated project management capacity for major transmission projects is the clearest signal that Washington is prepared to compete seriously for industrial investment, not just talk about it.
Washington closes a major industrial clean energy tenant. A clean fuel facility, green hydrogen project, electrified port terminal, or advanced manufacturing campus choosing Washington over a competing state validates that the state's energy infrastructure and business climate are credible. The pipeline of prospects exists. Closing one signals the strategy is working.
Workforce pipelines connect to clean energy at scale. Watch for rising enrollment in electrical, construction, and energy trades programs; employer-led partnerships that move displaced tech workers into clean energy roles; and state workforce investments sized to the opportunity rather than incremental budget line items.
Affordability pressures ease outmigration. Washington is losing workers to lower-cost states at a rate that will undermine any workforce strategy. If affordability initiatives begin reversing that trend, it signals the state understands that retaining talent is inseparable from building the clean energy economy.
Washington’s Choice
Washington enters this moment with more assets than most states can claim: Abundant hydropower, a world-class research and technology ecosystem, ports positioned for Pacific trade, a workforce with deep engineering and technical expertise, a legislative track record on clean energy that other states are still catching up to.
But assets are not advantages until someone acts on them. The regions that will lead the next phase of industrial growth are not necessarily those with the most resources, they are the ones that align their policy, infrastructure, and workforce investments around a shared strategy and execute with urgency.
The structural reset that part 1 of this series described - the normalization of tech employment, the fiscal pressure on cities, the communities absorbing second-order effects - is also an opening. It is a moment to diversify, to build, and to make Washington's economy more resilient across cycles rather than more dependent on any single sector's trajectory.
That work is already underway in communities, companies, and agencies across the state. The question is whether it accelerates fast enough to matter. Washington has everything it needs. What it needs now is the will to move.
Further Reading:
Sightline Institute, Northwest States Need to Build New Power Lines, Fast (2022)
OBP, Northwest leaders set renewable energy goals, but neglected a key element required to achieve them (2025)
Northwest Power and Conservation Council, Transmission (2022)
