Now Twice As Many Solar Jobs As Coal Jobs In The United States

[hatrack]

Putting solar panels on rooftops and arrays is a labor-intensive process. You need people to design and manufacture the panels. Then people to market the panels to homes, businesses, and utilities. Then people to come and install them.

It all adds up to a lot of jobs. Even though solar power still provides just a fraction of America’s electricity — about 1.3 percent — the industry now employs more than 260,000 people, according to a new survey from the nonprofit Solar Foundation. And it’s growing fast: Last year, the solar industry accounted for one of every 50 new jobs nationwide.

EDIT

There’s something to that argument. If the solar industry hopes to keep pushing costs down and become a major US energy source, it will likely need to become less labor-intensive over time. Some of that will happen naturally as it scales up and installations are in place. But pushing solar costs down dramatically will likely mean things like automated plants, robots doing installations, self-cleaning glass, and so on down the road. A truly dominant solar industry might not produce the same stunning jobs numbers.

But labor costs are only one way to think about the issue. There’s also a political angle here. America’s energy system is inextricable from policy and politics, and an industry that creates a lot of jobs is inevitably going to have more influence over that process. Coal miners in Appalachia played an outsized role in the 2016 presidential campaign, and the coal industry has been able to lobby hard for legislation and regulations by using the jobs argument. The solar industry doesn’t yet have the same political clout in Washington, DC, that the coal or petroleum industries do. (Renewable companies still spend way less on lobbying Congress than oil and gas firms do.) But as solar installations grow and more and more jobs are created, that’s rapidly changing. Notice that even though Donald Trump and other conservatives have criticized renewable energy, many Republicans now defend the production tax credits for wind and solar — in part because wind industries are now a significant source of jobs in key states like Iowa and Ohio.

EDIT

http://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/2/7/14533618/solar-jobs-coal

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

1. To the chagrin of Mitch McConnell