This is the first in a series of blogs to be published in coming weeks. Follow along to read more about BGA’s impactful research throughout the years.

By: Roxanne Johnson, BlueGreen Alliance Vice President of Research

The BlueGreen Alliance (BGA) was co-founded 20 years ago by the United Steelworkers (USW) and the Sierra Club. Early research work connected the dots on the importance of addressing both climate change and creating good jobs in trade, global climate agreements, chemicals, and building clean energy in the United States. Manufacturing has been a focus from our beginning as it is crucial to global competitiveness, innovation, and energy security and has historically been a key pathway into the middle class, especially for workers of color. Our manufacturing work now spans clean energy and advanced technology manufacturing, industrial transformation, supply chain development, and trade. (BGA’s automotive sector work will be covered in a separate blog.)

In 2011, BGA merged with the Apollo Alliance. Apollo’s 2009 Green Manufacturing Action Plan (GreenMAP) proposed federal policy recommendations to spur domestic green manufacturing. Associated state GreenMAPs produced in 2011-2012 proposed roadmaps for creating and maintaining good manufacturing jobs in states, and their 2010 Transportation MAP focused on expanding domestic production of transportation systems and component parts.

I started as a researcher at BGA in 2010 to work on the wind supply chain. BGA, the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA)—now part of the American Clean Power Association (ACP)—and USW had recently released Winds of Change: A Manufacturing Blueprint for the Wind Industry, a report that highlighted the potential for wind manufacturing jobs in the United State. BGA was working with National Institute of Standards and Technology Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP), the Global Wind Network (GLWN), and AWEA to get more U.S. manufacturers making wind turbine components. We produced a Wind Energy Industry Manufacturing Supplier Handbook, and later a similar solar guide. We worked with manufacturers to help them understand supply chain opportunities, where they might fit in, and how to get into the wind business.

In that role, I learned how BGA’s research equips partners and allies with robust data and analysis to support our shared work towards a clean, prosperous, and equitable economy. As I broadened my portfolio to work on the many other issue areas BGA covers with our Federal Policy team, I realized that BGA asks unique blue-green questions that no other organization works on and that we needed more internal research capacity to do them justice.

BGA hired two research assistants in 2016. The three of us became BGA’s Research Team, which has since grown and undertaken consistent efforts to collect data on manufacturers in clean economy supply chains. This includes ongoing work in transit rail and bus, automotive, clean energy, and completed work on building efficiency products. These maps show the breadth of clean economy manufacturing across the country and highlight the importance of ensuring that manufacturing continues to maintain and create good jobs to sustain local communities. The Research Team also supports efforts across the organization with research and data, contributing to literature reviews, factsheets, reports, interactive maps and other data visualizations, and more.

In 2019, BGA released Solidarity for Climate Action as the plan we needed to address both climate change and economic inequality. A core component of that plan was getting the manufacturing sector back on track. (A separate blog will discuss this in more detail.) We called for aggressive action to ensure that our nation remains competitive, that our manufacturing industry is strong, and that we retain our spot as an innovative leader. That year we also did significant research benchmarking domestically-produced steel as some of the cleanest in the world for both carbon emissions and pollutants as part of our Buy Clean work.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, we saw the impacts of offshoring supply chains for critical products when we didn’t have enough personal protective equipment (PPE) for medical and essential workers. We also saw disproportionate health and safety impacts for people of color, including those who work in manufacturing. In 2020, BGA analyzed the first Trump administration’s impact on working families, releasing a report titled Misled: The Impact of the Trump Administration’s Agenda on Working Families and the Environment. The report highlighted Trump’s use of the Defense Production Act (DPA) not to source the needed PPE but to force meatpacking plants to continue operating despite outbreaks of COVID.

Early in the Biden administration, BGA released Making Clean Deliver (2021), outlining how we can improve clean energy job quality and grow clean energy supply chains in the United States. Throughout the Biden-Harris administration, BGA put these ideas to work by responding to requests for information (RFIs) from federal agencies tasked with implementing programs funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), the Inflation Reduction Act, and the CHIPS and Science Act (CHIPS). Our comments articulated specific recommendations on how to ensure programs create and maintain good jobs and a robust, clean manufacturing sector in the United States. You can see examples of this in our 2024 Comments to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) on Industrial Decarbonization and 2023 research from Princeton showing cost effectiveness of using domestic components and fair wages for wind and solar.

We also developed resources for those applying for BIL and Inflation Reduction Act programs. These resources combine the deep industrial policy expertise of our staff with real-world experience from our industrial union partners. Some examples include our Hard-Hit Communities Map (2023), Community Benefits Agreement User Guide, Build America, Buy America (BABA) User Guide and webinar (2025), and BIL and Inflation Reduction Act Factsheets. During the Biden administration we also did significant work on Buy America in Energy Efficiency (2021), clean aluminum (2023), clean steel (2023), and cement (2024).

These policies were working. The BGA report Then and Now: U.S. Manufacturing Under the Trump and Biden-Harris Administrations (2024) discusses how trends in the Biden administration could help reverse manufacturing job loss and associated disproportionate impacts on manufacturing workers of color. In complementary work, Betony Jones and Joe Peck comprehensively document historic investment in clean energy, wage growth, and increase in unionization in the energy sector in their Roosevelt Institute report The Receipts: The Untold and Underappreciated Outcomes of Biden’s Clean Energy Strategy (2026).

Unfortunately, the second Trump administration and the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) have reversed much of this progress. BGA produced an updated user guide to what survived OBBBA and documented Trump administration cuts to DOE programs in a report and interactive web tool: One Year of Trump Administration and Congressional Attacks on Clean Energy Jobs and Innovation (2026). We also produced a comprehensive report on how Trump and his congressional allies have attacked working people: Bait and Switch: The Impacts of Trump Administration Policies at the Intersection of Clean Energy, Manufacturing, and Labor (2026).

These attacks are not slowing us down. In fact, our work is more important than ever. In 2025 we released our Manufacturing Roadmap that outlines six recommendations to promote U.S. competitiveness in clean technology manufacturing and transform the industrial sector. Earlier this year we released a new trade platform Rewriting the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) for Workers and the Environment at a press conference at the U.S. Capitol building.

We have built a 20-year legacy of commitment to manufacturing workers, the competitive industries they build, and the communities they support. Our policy work has been bolstered by robust research and data and deep expertise. We will continue working to solve both climate change and economic inequality in the manufacturing and industrial sector.

A summary of our Manufacturing and Industrial Policy work can be found here. Dig into BGA Research here.

About This Series

The BlueGreen Alliance exists in a unique space in the movement for good jobs in a clean economy and our coalition has a wealth of knowledge, expertise, and experience in the areas in which we work.  BGA research is developed by staff across the organization and equips partners and allies with robust data and analysis to support our shared work towards a clean, prosperous, and equitable economy. Our dedicated Research Department leverages our expertise to generate robust, evidence-supported research and data products and to inform data-driven analysis and policy recommendations.

As we celebrate our 20th anniversary in 2026, this four-part blog series reflects on 20 years of research at the BlueGreen Alliance.

Part 1: Manufacturing

Part 2: Automotive Sector

Part 3: Impactful Jobs Studies

Part 4: Tracking the Clean Economy