The California Energy Commission advanced more than $11 million in clean-energy workforce and research funding at its July 8 business meeting, approving four labor- and training-focused grants plus one EPIC research award.
The package included a $5 million CREATE grant to the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California, a $1.5 million Workforce Enablement Program grant to Los Angeles Trade-Technical College, a $1.5 million CRESST apprenticeship-support grant to the same trades council, and a $1,289,757 SMART grant to expand heat-pump contractor training at six apprenticeship sites, according to the CEC business meeting materials.
The commission also approved a $3 million EPIC grant to The Regents of the University of California, on behalf of the Irvine Campus for Project SIGNAL, a forecasting project aimed at modeling behind-the-meter solar, batteries and electric vehicles. The materials say the work is intended to improve grid resilience and net-load forecasting, and it includes partners such as UC Irvine, UC San Diego, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Derapi, Inc.
Across the five items, the commission’s summaries show approvals for workforce training, apprenticeship retention and research tied to California electrification policy and residential decarbonization. The meeting packet supports the approvals, but the transcript and final vote tallies were not retrieved in this run.
