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Guest Blog: Blue Collar Families Are Kentucky’s Green Energy Future!

This article was submitted by Julia Finch, Director of the Sierra Club, Kentucky chapter.

Recently, my Sierra Club Kentucky Chapter colleagues and I realized that our families had all been shaped by energy and industry. Tom’s family mined coal for generations in southeastern Kentucky, where his granddad led the UMWA in Jenkins. Sarah’s grandfather worked at Ford Motor Company in Louisville, a union job that provided a foundation for future generations. My dad worked in the steel industry in Pittsburgh, starting with an entry-level job cleaning slag out of furnaces. We are connected through our blue collar, working class, industrial backgrounds, and this is what positions us to fight so passionately for a cleaner, greener industrial sector.

There is an incredible opportunity on the line for Kentucky: Century Aluminum is looking at northeastern Kentucky as the location for their Green Aluminum Smelter project, selected in 2024 by the DOE to receive up to $500 million dollars in federal funding with the potential to create 1,000 permanent jobs for the region. More importantly, it could help lock Kentucky into a cycle of growth based on modern manufacturing processes and clean energy. But a renewable energy supply is the key, as the primary aluminum smelting process is extremely energy intensive! It’s time to join forces with all partners who want to dump our fossil fuel grid and transition to renewable energy as soon as possible–while keeping good industrial and manufacturing jobs for our skilled workforce! Primary aluminum is a vital component of electric vehicles and battery production, and will play a key role in building electrification across the country. We want Century to seize upon this opportunity: now is the right time, and Boyd County is the right place. For our part, we need to tell the important story of the role that Kentuckians have played and continue to play in our nation’s energy and industry sectors, and why a just transition away from fossil fuels does not have to sacrifice family-sustaining jobs in industry and manufacturing.

Working class families are presented with an impossible choice: industrial jobs or environmental protections. This false choice has devastated Appalachian Kentucky, as well as every fading industrial city and town along the Ohio River from east to west. By deliberately limiting options and forcing people to choose between extremes, corporations have profited while the environment and our communities have suffered. This is why a just and equitable transition off of fossil fuels needs working class support to turn the tables. And we think Kentuckians will be at the heart of this transformation, fighting for clean energy alternatives and decrying false narratives about industry.

If you’re a blue collar baby like myself, we want to hear from you! Tell us your story here. And if you’re from the Ashland area or have friends or family there, please join us at the Boyd County Library on October 28 from 6:00–8:00 p.m. for a community conversation about Sierra Club’s Industrial Transformation campaign and green aluminum! 

Julia Finch

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