Department of Labor's 2021 Federal Climate Adaptation Plan

The Department of Labor's 2021 Federal Climate Adaptation Plan is a national cross-sectoral action plan of the United States. Its main objectives are reducing worker injuries, illnesses and deaths from occupational exposure to hazardous heat or health and safety risks during emergency response and recovery; raising awareness, educating employers and workers on strategies, and providing practical tools for employers and workers to implement these strategies to prevent worker injuries, illnesses, and death from hazardous heat and emergency response efforts as climate conditions change; engaging stakeholders to understand challenges and promote current best practices to respond to climate change related hazards and trends; tracking and analyzing climate change related hazard trends to address policy gaps; assessment of potential physical vulnerabilities and risks that could result from climate events across our 2,600 facility assets; identification of potential adaptive measures to ensure facility resilience to climate events; balancing adaptive measures to optimize resiliency with additional consideration of GHG reductions and environmental justice; improving health and safety for employees and visitors to DOL facilities; maintaining robust 24/7 Information Technology (IT) and Communications infrastructure; leveraging competitive grants, including Workforce Opportunity for Rural Communities (WORC) grants and Veteran Clean Energy Training grants, to prepare workers for clean energy sector jobs; providing intensive and ongoing technical assistance focused on increasing completion rates of participants entering training to ensure that they receive the skills and certifications needed to contribute to a net-zero emission economy; collecting and disseminating information on occupations related to clean energy, including new and emerging tasks and technology skills to help individuals make informed training and career choices; reviewing Job Corps’ career technical training offerings and identifying opportunities to promote educational training programs in renewable and clean energy and incorporate “green” training elements into other programs; developing and awarding grants for communities that have been impacted or are likely to be impacted by coal mining and coal power plant employment loss. These grants will prepare dislocated workers for good jobs in high-demand occupations aligned with regional or community economic development; identifying opportunities to assist the Interagency Working Group on Coal and Power Plant Communities and Economic Revitalization efforts to support and revitalize the economies of coal and power plant communities; implementing the Working Group’s recommendations on how to best deploy grants, technical assistance, financing, procurement, and other programs to achieve these aims; assessment of potential vulnerabilities and risks to procurement processes; developing climate literacy and informing the acquisition community of resiliency provisions necessary to strengthen our long-term climate change preparedness; identifying supply-chain vulnerabilities and contracting options ahead of acute disruptions and develop robust strategies to manage those challenges to best support mission resilience; and reducing Agency cradle-to-grave carbon footprint by ensuring applicable resilient and sustainable terms and conditions are included in relevant contract actions.