What If All U.S. Coal Workers Were Retrained to Work in Solar?

[mahatmakanejeeves]

What If All U.S. Coal Workers Were Retrained to Work in Solar?

by Joshua M. Pearce

August 08, 2016

The global economy is in a massive transition from a fossil-fuel-based energy system to one using sophisticated renewable energy technologies. For tens of thousands of fossil fuel workers, though, the energy industry outlook is not promising. For coal industry workers, the future looks particularly bleak. However, research I conducted with Edward Louie of Oregon State University offers hope for a better future based on retraining workers. Our study (published in the journal Energy Economics) quantified the costs and benefits of retraining coal workers for employment in the rapidly expanding solar photovoltaic industry—and it explores different ways to pay for this retraining.

First, some background on the coal industry: Profitability for U.S. coal-fired power plants has been declining and coal use has dropped radically since 2007—a trend that is expected to continue. This reduced profitably has driven a steep cut in coal plants. The U.S. Energy Information Administration notes that between 2010 and 2012, 14 gigawatts (GW) of coal-fired capacity was retired and that a total of 60 GW will be retired by 2020. What these dry government numbers leave out is the effect on coal workers and their families as coal mines close and one major coal company after another files for bankruptcy. Even the world’s largest private-sector coal company, Peabody Energy, declared bankruptcy this past April. And as coal investors have fled in droves to invest in more profitable companies and industries, coal workers have been left with pink slips and mortgages on houses with few buyers in blighted coal country. It is clear that coal is no longer a competitive form of electrical generation.

The one energy sector that is growing at an incredible rate is the solar industry—and it is hiring.

For decades the solar industry has battled against enormous government subsidies for coal. But because of the tremendous drop in costs for solar technology, solar adoption is now rising rapidly. Bloomberg reports that the American solar industry had a record first quarter in 2016, and for the first time, it drove the majority of new power generation. The U.S. solar industry is creating a lot of jobs, bringing on new workers 12 times faster than the overall economy. As of November 2015, the solar industry employed 208,859 solar workers, which is already larger than the roughly 150,000 jobs remaining in the domestic coal industry. (It is important to note that both of these numbers are severely limited by the data available, but it can be safely assumed there are far more solar workers in the U.S. today than there were last year—and far fewer coal workers than in 2014.) ... Our study found that this growth of solar-related employment could benefit coal workers, by easily absorbing the coal-industry layoffs over the next 15 years and offering full-time careers.

[tonyt53]

1. Got a bit of an issue with part of this. Oregon isn't coal country. The article does have merit tho.

I grew up in and still live in the western KY coal fields. My dad operated that monster coal shovel. I worked in underground mines for three summers while i was in college. My perspective is a little different from that of the author. For 60 years, guys quit high school at 16 and farted around for a couple of years, then went to work in the coal mines, usually the same place their dad worked. This is true of the guys that didn't go to the mines, except they went to the factories. They didn't get a good education because they didn't need it in their own minds and the minds of their families. Coal started dying around here in the early 80's. Hmmm, those were Reagan years - but that connection is another story.

By the early 90's, the coal jobs were half of what they had been ten years prior. The coal-fired power plants were all still operating, but it was taking fewer and fewer miners to get the same production due to newer mining methods. In the eastern coal fields, they had switched to mountain top removal which took about one fourth of the manpower to get the same amount of coal. All through the 90's and early 2000's there was always some attempt to retrain laid off coal miners. Only thing is, they wanted no part of it because that meant exposing the fact that they didn't have much more than a basic education of a middle schooler. not bashing them, just relating observations and facts. When directional bore oil and gas drilling was developed and started to be utilized along with fracking, some opportunists jumped. The one person that jumped more than others was T. Boone Pickens. He started lobbying Congress to enact tougher environmental measures in about 2004. he was also hard lobbying a couple of other oil men - Bush II and Dick Cheney. In 2006 the Bush EPA pushed through new standards that pretty much doomed the coal-fired power plant industry. Hell, even TX hasn't allowed a traditional coal-fired plant to be built since 2004. The coal-fired power plant operators had the typical ten year compliance period, meaning that by 2016 those new emission standards had to be met or the plant had to shut down. Then came the use of natural gas. A combined cycle natural gas plant can be built for about one fourth the cost of a typical coal-fired plant. The power plant operator sees about 35%-38% more profit than when burning coal. Profit!!!!!

Peabody wanted to renege on their promise of healthcare to their retirees. The miners contacted Mitch McConnell and he sided with Peabody. So Mitch cares more about the coal company than the coal miners.

Now back to the original subject. The people in coal mining areas of the country don't care to be educated, in fact they will resist.