Worcester Business Journal

wbjournal.com | April 17, 2023 | Worcester Business Journal 21 Supporting the transition to electric vehicles V I E W P O I N T E D I T O R I A L F or over a decade, Unitil has visualized our role in a renewable energy future as serving as the enabling platform for our customers and to play a key role in unlocking the full potential of emerging technologies. We can transform the way people meet their evolving energy needs and help create a clean and sustainable future for us all. One of the most significant areas of opportunity to achieve this goal lies on the roads. e transportation sector is one of the leading causes of carbon emissions in New England, but all indications are that's about to change rapidly. More than half of passenger cars sold in the U.S. will be electric vehicles by 2030, according to a report from Bloomberg New Energy Finance. e transition to EVs is happening, and we have a responsibility to ensure this transition occurs in a way keeping electricity reliable and affordable. We can design rates to save customers money by charging their car overnight. Historically, utilities have offered rates with one per-kilowatthour price no matter the time of day. Today, we now offer an option to sign up for an EV Time-of-Use rate, offering different prices. is will help balance a regional demand for electricity expected to nearly double as part of this energy transition. While being able to fuel your car by charging up at home is a game-changing innovation, we recognize one of the chief sources of anxiety working against EV adoption is the availability of charging stations. Range anxiety is the fear if customers are too far from home, they won't have a place to charge. To support businesses looking to bring more charging options to communities, we've created the EV Make Ready pro- gram to provide turnkey service for EV chargers. We will provide infrastructure like running a new service line, upgrading an existing service line, or putting in a transformer at no cost for businesses in Massachu- setts. We've created a revised rate structure lowering the demand charge at such facilities, to lower the bar- rier for early adopters. In addition, we're launching a program for residential customers to offset the cost of installing a smart charger at home, to make it seamless to charge their cars during off-peak periods. While no one can predict exactly where EV technology will be in five or 10 years, the opportunities are likely to increase. We are ready to help lead the way into this next era of electric vehicle adoption as we all explore what this new technology offers together. Cindy L. Carroll is vice president of customer energy solutions at utility company Unitil, providing gas and electric service in North Worcester County. BY CINDY L. CARROLL Special to WBJ A T H O U SA N D WO R D S B Y R A M Ó N L . S A N D O V A L e workforce shortage is coming for us all Cindy L. Carroll T he problems with staffing shortages in the healthcare industry stretch back decades. Since at least the 1990s, the industry has been pushing for more people to become trained nurses, and salaries rose as demand outpaced supply, particularly as the large Baby Boomer generation started to need more health care. e industry is highly susceptible to burnout, as healthcare professionals are oen thrust into fraught situations and deal with life-and-death scenarios. Like other industries, the coronavirus pandemic turned a staffing problem into a staffing crisis. Demand for services spiked, burnout increased, professionals retired, and healthcare providers had to pull out all the stops to keep operating. As WBJ Staff Writer Isabel Tehan points out in her "Bankrupting the system" story on page 16, one very poignant problem caused by the healthcare staffing crisis is the unsustainable rise in the use of travel nurses. Unlike staff nurses, travel nurses only work for a limited time period and are used to fill in staffing gaps. ey are also paid three times what a staff nurse makes. Before COVID, travel nurses would be used when staff nurses went on vacation or if another temporary hole in staffing rose. However, since the pandemic began, travel nurses are a regular part of the staffing system, filling gaps that seemingly can never be closed. e largest healthcare provider in Central Massachusetts – UMass Memorial Health in Worcester – is employing 60% more travel nurses than before the pandemic and doesn't anticipate nearing normal levels until at least 2024. e travel-nurse problem is an extreme example but indicative of the larger problem plaguing not only health care, but industries across the Central Massachusetts economy. e staffing shortages from early in the pandemic – caused by early retirements, people re-evaluating their work lives, and balancing child care needs – have grown into a systemic issue. Even nationally as major tech firms, which are actually a very small part of the economy, lay off tens of thousands of workers, the unemployment rates in Central Massachusetts remain around 5%, and the largest portion of WBJ readers responding to an April 10 online poll said their companies still are looking to add positions. Companies raise wages to entice more workers, but problems like affordable housing and limited public transit contribute to the region's inability to attract a robust, well-rounded workforce. Businesses need to start being more proactive on issues like affordable housing, child care, education, and transportation to stave off a workforce crisis. Few employers or industries will find themselves in a situation like UMass Memorial, forced to overrely on temporary staffing that costs three times as much as traditional workers. Even though the workforce shortage will manifest itself differently for each industry, it's better for companies to rein in the problem now and keep it under control, rather than suffer the unpredictability caused by a prolonged crisis. The above Editorial is the opinion of the WBJ Editorial Board. The Viewpoint column, the A Thousand Words cartoon, and the Word from the Web commentary represent the opinions of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of WBJ or its staff. WBJ welcomes letters to the editor and commentary submissions. Send them to bkane@wbjournal.com. W W

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