First, a comment about "green energy investments". I read a few articles that this was creating a lot of new jobs that didn't exist before. So, even if climate change isn't a priority, there is the side benefit of lots of new jobs.

The answer to your question is a bit mixed, and also company-dependent. I never worked at Intel, but it is my understanding that you had to have an associate's degree (2-yr) to work in their fabs. I will defer to someone from Intel if they say otherwise. For my company, that was not a requirement. However, you had to take an intelligence test to indicate you could be trained to work the machines. Evidently, a lot of people failed that test (and it wasn't that difficult). The machinery is complicated, and expensive, and dangerous (in some cases), so there is a fair amount of training.

But, no, you generally don't need college to apply for most of the production jobs (except Intel, so I'm told). In fact, in my company, you could work up. I knew several people that started as production, and eventually worked their way up to "techs". One even was promoted to "engineer", never having gone to college.** I'm not sure about the office workers (people forget about those!), but I suspect not for them, either. You did need college (generally) for an engineering job.




**I put them in quotes to distinguish job titles from formal degrees. We had "operators", technician 1, 2, and 3, and a few levels of "engineer", then "manager" and up.