The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently announced that RichmondBUILD will receive a $200,000 Environmental Workforce Development and Job Training grant to help low-income residents learn the skills needed to secure employment in the environmental field. Click to read the EPA’s full press release.

About MCE’s partnership with RichmondBUILD

2013 | MCE and RichmondBUILD signed a contract for $45,000 to provide 80 – 100 local residents with over 330 hours of construction skills training, numeracy and literacy training, job placement, case management, job-site mentoring, and pre- and post-employment counseling. Many of these graduates went on to work on an LED streetlight retrofit project in Richmond.

2016 | RichmondBUILD provided labor to MCE’s most recent solar Feed-in Tariff project, located at the Freethy Industrial Park, which supported twenty-three jobs. Through RichmondBUILD, workers gained a new construction skill set, making them eligible for further opportunities to work for local solar installation companies. Three permanent jobs were created by Energy Systems Development to maintain the system for ten years.

Present | MCE’s Solar One project in the City of Richmond requires a 50 percent minimum Richmond resident workforce to complete the construction of 10.5 MW of new local renewable energy generation.