What are some of the jobs of the future?

Adirondacks are positioned as a hub for clean energy and sustainable agriculture careers

By Tim Rowland

Wherever Mark Sauter sees an oil tank he sees a job. 

The owner of the tank, be it oil, propane or kerosene, may not know it yet, but at some point the increasing efficiency of heat pumps, lower cost of operation and their ability to cool a home in warming summers will drive the switch from petroleum to electricity, Sauter figures.

”They’re going to have to convert,” said Sauter, an independent contractor for Mitsubishi Electric heat pumps. He worked around the world before settling in Westport in 2016 and predicts a growing demand for installations. It won’t be overnight, but the work will be steady and long-lasting, he said, because of the number of oil tanks in the Adirondacks.

As the planet warms and its inhabitants look for short- and long-term solutions, jobs and practices associated with dealing with climate change will increase in places like the park.

Changes now and in the near future

Already the installers of heat pumps — now efficient to temperatures well below zero — say they have more work than they have workers. Same for solar contractors. Entrepreneurs are experimenting with windmills scaled to a single home.

The region’s airports will need to be fitted with high-powered charging stations. Those who once went into auto body repair will be lured to Plattsburgh to put finishing touches on electric airplanes already capable of flying 300 miles at a hop.

Carbon sequestration will be a consideration of conservationists and foresters, but also farmers who will be planting more cover crops, growing resilient antique fruit trees and nursery stock of species previously unimaginable in the park like paw paws and pecans, and incorporating trees into their pastures and along their streams.

Linemen and women will be needed to beef up the notoriously sketchy Adirondack grid. Roads and bridges will need to be hardened against fierce storms. Pesticide applicators will be needed to combat waves of destructive insects that might not have withstood the Adirondack ski resorts will need more snowmakers and warm-weather harmful algal blooms will need to be monitored and mitigated. 

There will be more openings for scientists, engineers and data analysts to study the effects of climate change on rivers, forests and communities. Skilled writers — or skilled prompters of artificial intelligence — will document their findings and colleges and nonprofits will disseminate them around the world.

Some predict the Adirondacks will one day be a haven for climate refugees, who will need a full suite of everyday services.

New ways of doing things

As climate affects the planet, the worth of the forest itself is being reimagined, most obviously through the sale of carbon offsets.

In short, it will be difficult to point to an Adirondack job that isn’t in some way touched by global warming, in part because many things that have been done in the past will have to be done over.

 “We’ll need new approaches to old things,” said Zach Hobbs, interim deputy director for the Adirondack North Country Association, a nonprofit whose mission includes adaptation to clean energy.

Hobbs pointed to the ubiquitous school bus, which will now need trained EV technicians as gas- and diesel-powered fleets are phased out. Even businesses and bookkeepers will need a clean-energy expertise to keep up with new and changing incentives.

As a generation of older electricians is retiring, ANCA’s Clean Energy Program Director Jill Henck said those who take their places will need new areas of expertise. “Electricians will be needed for every step along the way to clean-energy conversions,” she said.

Broc Jennings, who founded Saranac Lake-based ADK Solar with his father-in-law Jim Ammon in 2014, backs that up. “We’re getting busier and busier,” he said. “The demand for workers keeps going up — all the tradespeople I talk to have the same problem.”

In the Adirondacks, not only is solar clean energy, in some cases it’s the only energy. Jennings said since the pandemic there’s been a bump in large, off-grid estates far from the nearest powerline. 

Not only that, energy technology is practically changing by the minute, with more efficient solar panels and heat pumps — which once fizzled below the freezing mark — now capable down to double-digits below zero. It’s increased the demand not just for the products, but for training, Jennings said.

Electric airplane manufacturer moves in

Same with BETA Technologies, a Burlington, Vermont-based electric aircraft company. It recently announced a $40 million expansion in Plattsburgh, where aircraft manufactured across Lake Champlain will be painted and tested.

In 2020 a Sikorsky S-61N helicopter airlifted BETA’s first ALIA electric plane to Plattsburgh. A year later, it flew back on its own. Electric aircraft “are real, they’re flying around,” said Sarah DeShaw, a member of BETA’s workforce development team. “We are going to change the face of aviation.”

The expansion will bring with it 85 jobs, and BETA is working with CV-TEC trade school (a flight simulator is a powerful recruitment tool) to train students as aerospace coating application specialists, in a field that a decade ago didn’t exist.

DeShaw said that along with planes, there will be jobs building out a network of chargers, supply-chain support businesses and developing ever-new technologies that one day might help rescue injured hikers in the High Peaks.

 “That’s the future of work,” she said.

Educators on board

Which points to more work for schools, research centers and institutions that both predict and study a warming planet and those that deal with its effects. 

“Most jobs will be impacted in some way by climate,” said Zoe Smith, vice president of strategic initiatives at Paul Smith’s College.

Those research-oriented changes are already happening at Paul Smith’s, said author and natural sciences professor Curt Stager. His campus is “divided between people chopping trees and people hugging trees.”

That’s not unlike the population of the park itself, and gives the college a unique perspective on Adirondack research. “We’re small, but we’re very good,” he said. “What we do is endemic to what we are.”

As winters become “less predictable,” Stager said the resulting changes — from the unspoiled Follensby Pond to the Saranac Lake ice palace to the culture and population itself — will need to be monitored, recorded and studied.

As it appears the effects of climate change will be less severe in the Northeast, people from more distressed areas may move here in greater numbers, which again will create challenges and opportunities for Adirondack communities.

“If we do it right, people will be able to afford to live here without being rich,” he said.

Whether it’s planning for the human or natural world, methods and equipment are becoming more sophisticated, which in itself opens new opportunities.  

Teaching and research will be aided by new technology that is allowing mare accurate assessments of field work. “We’re operating with something closer to complete information,” said John Foppert, director of the Institute of Forestry at Paul Smith’s. “For a long time the forests changed, but (management) tools really didn’t. Today with remote sensing technology, we can get an exact picture of every single tree in the forest.”

And forest technology is inspiring to young people making career choices. “The interest in forests is absolutely growing,” Foppert said, as landowners seek to maximize the value of their woodlots or find managed approaches to forest production and ecology known as silviculture.

Farmers adapt, too

In the course of world history, notes Alex Caskey, the branch of silviculture known as agroforestry isn’t new, it’s just been forgotten. At his Barred Owl Brook farm in the Lake Champlain Valley north of Westport, Caskey’s carefully bred Katahdin hair sheep graze on pasture, but also on willow, buckthorn and other “trash” trees that provide nourishment along with shade, soil structure and water retention.

 “Genetics is the key,” said Caskey, who also runs a nursery that experiments with blight-resistant chestnuts species such as pawpaws and northern pecans that never would have survived in the Adirondack climate of yesterday.

Science, climate and agriculture also come together at Mace Chasm Farm in Keeseville, where in her spare time Courtney Grimes-Sutton supplements farm income by grafting antique apples on hardy Russian rootstock. The lucrative side hustle has the added benefit of producing a revenue stream at a time of the year when the farm is hiring staff to plant, but summer sales have yet to kick in. 

Grimes-Sutton sees the future of agricultural work in the Adirondacks not just possible but essential. “Small town America died when small agriculture died,” she said. “Agriculture is at the intersection of so many issues, like health and housing.”