Solar Energy Is the Fastest Growing Industry In the US

Hugh Pickens writes "According to Rhone Resch, the last three years have seen the U.S. solar industry go from a start-up to a major industry that is creating well-paying jobs and growing the economy in all 50 states, employing 93,000 Americans in 2010, a number that is expected to grow between 25,000 to 50,000 this year (PDF). In the first quarter of 2011, the solar industry installed 252 megawatts of new solar electric capacity, a 66 percent growth from the same time frame in 2010. Solar energy is creating more jobs per megawatt than any other energy source (PDF) with the capability, according to one study, of generating over 4 million jobs by 2030 with aggressive energy efficiency measures. There are now almost 3,000 megawatts of solar electric energy installed in the U.S., enough to power 600,000 homes. In the manufacturing sector, solar panel production jumped 31 percent. 'The U.S. market is expected to more than double yet again in 2011, installing enough solar for more than 400,000 homes,' writes Resch. 'Last year, the industry set the ambitious yet achievable goal of installing 10 gigawatts annually by 2015 (PDF) – enough to power 2 million more homes each and every year.'"

Comments

J/MW?

[Anonymous Coward]

Jobs per megawatt? What the hell kind of measure of efficiency is that?!

Re:J/MW?

[goombah99]

Jobs per megawatt? What the hell kind of measure of efficiency is that?!

Jobs = work/week
Watt = work/second

Jobs/MegaWatt = 0.144 E-12

Re:J/MW?

[arpad1]

It's the kind of measure you use when you don't want to discuss subsidized dollars per job. It's also the kind of measure you use when you don't want to discuss how many non-subsidized jobs it cost to pay for one subsidized job.

Re:J/MW?

[trout007]

$ per Megawatt hour is the measure of efficiency. Ideally you would want a world where you had unlimited energy that required no money (ie jobs). This is a measure of inefficiency and it shows that Solar is the worst.

Anyone that claims a project is great because it creates jobs is an idiot. The goal is to have stuff not jobs.

Batist wrote that all people act as a both a producer and a consumer. In their job they are a producer and in the rest of their life they are a consumer.What do they as a producer want? They want the good or service they producer to be scarce and expensive. What do they as a consumer want? They want the good or service they buy to be abundant and cheap.

What type of society do you want to live in, one where things are cheap and abundant or scarce and expensive? Any law that favors producers does so by making goods scarce and expensive. Unfortunately like the people that wrote this article it is easy to show how a certain law that favors a producer helps those people. It takes a bit more thinking to explain that the only way to help that producer is by hurting all consumers.

Re:J/MW?

[SirGarlon]

It takes a bit more thinking to explain that the only way to help that producer is by hurting all consumers.

Nonsense. Read up on the basic economic principle of comparative advantage and then write us a 500 word essay on how economics are not a zero-sum game.

Re:J/MW?

[trout007]

I know all about comparative advantage. When a country can produce more and better sugar because they have the right climate it makes sense to import it to the degree it is cost effective to do so. But if you pass a law restricting import or putting a tariff on it you do so specifically to benefit the domestic sugar producers at the expense of all sugar consumers.

Re:J/MW?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

There is are a couple of unfortunate wrinkles in what would otherwise be true:

If you don't have money, it scarcely matters what the price of goods is. You are still fucked. For virtually everybody this impecunious, having money = having a job, not selling some bonds or re-allocating your portfolio in the direction of a higher-dividend asset assortment. Given the er... not exactly small... number of people who have fallen off this particular bus(with the additional fun that periods of joblessness do wonders for one's future prospects of being re-hired...) "jobs" as something close to an end in itself does represent a net gain for a substantial number of people.

Secondly, you say that "Ideally you would want a world where you have unlimited energy that required no money (ie jobs). This is true If and Only If the gains from increased efficiency are allocated in a manner that gives you a slice of the expanding pie. If, however, the pie is expanding; but your share of it is shrinking even faster(because whatever you do is an "inefficiency", you are quickly sliding toward point #1.

Empirically, a great many people have reason to be concerned, and to have no particular room to hope that even steady encheapening of goods will allow them to do better than tread water, since labor is definitely one of the goods being encheapened. As this cheery little J.P. Morgan report notes, in a discussion of the improvement of corporate margins: "There are a lot of moving parts in the margin equation, but as shown in the second chart, reductions in wages and benefits explain the majority of the net improvement in margins. This trend has continued; as we have shown several times over the last two years, US labor compensation is now at a 50-year low relative to both company sales and US GDP (see EoTM April 26, 2011)."

Improvements in efficiency do you absolutely no good if somebody with more market power than you have is capturing them. This would appear to be the case. Under such conditions, the people with less market power(ie. about the bottom 95%) don't have a rational interest in efficiency; because they won't capture the gains from it. While(from the perspective of people's actual state of knowledge) the fascination with "jobs" might be largely sentimental populism, it is arguably not economically irrational. If essentially all gains from efficiency(which includes reduction in human resources costs) are being captured by people who aren't you, it is very much in your interest to demand greater inefficiency and attempt to roll back the reduction in demand for you.

Only in a society where everybody has a boat is the fact that the 'rising tide lifts all boats' a comforting one. If a substantial portion of the population is stuck in the mud, the rising tide is not a welcome development...

How much

[georgenh16]

It seems to me, Higher jobs/MW = Higher cost/MW

How much of this industry growth is fueled by government subsidies?

Re:How much

[tbannist]

That's a possibility but not a necessity. You seem to have forgotten that the difference between oil, gas and coal energy generation and wind, solar, geothermal and hydro electric is that you have to pay for inputs to oil, gas and coal. If the plant costs are comparable, then the difference in jobs/MW only needs to be less than what the plant would spend on fossil fuels (and eventually carbon taxes).

What I think it means is instead of buying tonnes of coal to burn, solar plants pay people to inspect, clean and repair the solar panels.

As for government subsidies, as I understand there are far more subsidies for coal, gas and oil than there are for solar. I've read the difference is about 10 to 1 each. So for every $1 in government subsidies for solar, coal gets $10, and natural gas gets $10 and oil gets $10.

Re:How much

[LehiNephi]

It really comes down to what you call "subsidies." Tax deductions for capital investments, which the anti-fossil-fuel crowd incorrectly call a subsidy, is not unique to the oil/gas business, and similar deductions commonly available to *all* businesses in all industries. Tax *credits*, however (without which we wouldn't see much, if any, solar installations), certainly are a subsidy, and are very generous for renewable energy. You also need to take into account the volume of production from each source. If there's 10x as much subsidies (if you want to call it that) to oil/gas as there are to solar, but there's 100x as much oil/gas production, then it stands to reason that the rate of subsidies to solar is 10x that given to oil/gas.

There's also the minor question of "are we paying for the right thing?" Subsidies/grants/investments for research into renewables is one thing--they have the potential to produce improvements in the efficiency and cost of such systems. But subsidies for production and installation of renewables (as the US gov't currently does) is absolute futility--by doing so, the government is distorting the value of those products, actually providing a disincentive for producers to make those systems more economical on their own.

Re:How much

[Anonymous Coward]

Your comparison is meaningless. You should be comparing the 93000 employees with the growth rate of solar energy installations, not currently installed effect. 3000 MW already installed require very little maintainance, but new installations require a lot of work per MW. Research, production and installation. A lot of people are employed in the heavily subsidised coal industry as well, but mostly in maintainance and coal production. Not as much in building new power plants.

I've got good news and bad news and more bad news.

[hey!]

The good news: Solar energy is the fastest growing industry in the US.

The bad news for solar energy: Solar energy is the fastest growing industry in the US.

The bad news for the US: Solar energy is the fastest growing industry in the US.

Re:Propped Up Industry

[Vihai]

How much are the subsidies in USA? Here in Italy they are around 0.42 €/kWh and are crazily high, to the point that no more subsidies are going to be given starting this year.

Rats flock to government subsidies

[argStyopa]

Any industry heavy with government subsidies - defense, social welfare, medicine, and now 'renewables' - attracts opportunists of both the legitimate and illegitimate sort.

Legitimate businesses are interested because they know that having a politically-attractive industry can make a lot of low-/no-interest money available as well as making the government paperwork (permits, etc.) all move much quicker than usual. Finally, it's a truism that once established government programs almost never die (for God's sake, the TVA's REA is still alive and flourishing - conveniently renamed to the RUS "Rural Utilities Service" - to legitimize its ever-spreading 'responsibilities' hahaha).

Illegitimate business (con men, criminals, etc.) are attracted because government investment typically now means at least dollars in the 10^6 range, that until they reach 10^9 these numbers are considered 'trivial' and barely worth notice/mention by Federal agencies (how many pallets of $$billions have been untraceably 'lost' in Iraq/Afghanistan?) - a perfect environment for fraud.

From Another Point of View

[eldavojohn]

You can't even get a permit let a lone build a nuclear or coal power plant because of EPA regulations and red tape.

You're not going to hear much sympathy from me. I've been to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, I've seen what natural water should look like. By my own first hand account, there is none of that on the East Coast.

So let's see here, after some shallow checking on Google News we have: Frack water to be dumped in Niagara Falls, the EPA has been completely ignoring Anacostia River pollution and the dead zone in the Chesapeake is growing. And that's just news from the last couple of days. How can I be upset that the EPA wants to tie up companies in "red tape" when this is happening in our country? Why don't the solar companies get the same red tape? Oh, right, they don't produce a byproduct that is often dumped in nearby water. I'm sure the site of solar panel farms suffers the same environmental scrutiny that your poor "hobbled" coal and nuclear power facilities face. It's just that the byproducts and environmental effects appear to be okay for local residents.

It's like watching a race between two people running and one person get's hit by a car every third step they take and acting surprised the other runner is doing so well. It's a rigged race and the desired outcome shouldn't be a huge surprise.

The way I see it, is it's more like two people racing and one person pouring crude oil along the entire race path and then sliding on it with a sled and beating the person that's trying to run through it. Meanwhile the people who live near the race track are drinking shit in their water. Think I'm making that up? Go ask the residents of West Virginia who get to watch their entire state terraformed into slag. PA's natural gas boon could result in the same thing if we don't have that evil evil evil "red tape."

Re:The race is rigged

[DrBoumBoum]

Too bad solar manufacturing is heavily subsidized by the US government

Or is it?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:you need to look at subsidies per megawatt

[clonan]

Without the federal subsidies AND the special liability protection offered to Coal, oil and gas they would fail.

If you wiped out all subsidies, Coal, Oil and Gas WOULD be cheaper slightly. Afterall, they have 125 years of infrastructure built.

People said the same thing about thoes fancy horseless carriages and the new fangled steam-ships.

Subsidies are important to give new and promising technology an opportunity in the market. Solar is still a baby. We are every year finding new and dramatic ways to improve solar. It will probably be a baby for another 20 years. Coal, Oil and gas haven't been babes for 50+ years. We have seen a small improvement in efficiency but thats it.

Once a technology is no longer in development it should be stripped of subsidies and protections and allowed to stand on its own. Coal, Oil and gas never have done this.

Re:Propped Up Industry

[knghtrider]

Solar is propped up far less than the dirty fossil fuel industry. Oil and Natural Gas alone are set to reap more than $1.25 Billion from Texas alone this year in subsides and tax breaks. At the Federal level, they've reaped more than $50 Billion since 2002. In order to level the proverbial playing field, the subsidies to Solar and other alternative energy forms are necessary. But the Oil and Gas companies are reaping billions of dollars in profits and paying less tax than the average wage earner in terms of a percentage of income.

Without subsides, our $4 gallon gas would be more like what they pay in Europe--nearly double that and would cripple or kill the auto industry. Of course it may well spur development of better and more efficient (and more profitable) forms of Public Transportation, but most of that would take a decade or more to put in place. This, too, would kill our fragile economy. Had this all been done during the Clinton Administration, when we were seeing 5% Annual Growth, then removing the subsidies for Oil and Gas would