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Solar Energy Now Employs More Americans Than Oil, Coal and Gas Combined (computerworld.com)
Solar energy now accounts for 43% of the workers in the U.S. power-generating industry, surpassing the 22% from all workers in the coal, oil, and gas industries combined, according to new figures from the Department of Energy. Slashdot reader Lucas123 writes:
In 2016, the solar workforce in the U.S. increased by 25% to 374,000 employees, compared to 187,117 electrical generation jobs in the coal, gas and oil industries... [N]et power generation from coal sources declined by 53% between 2006 and September 2016; electricity generation from natural gas increased by 33%; and solar grew by over 5,000% -- from 508,000 megawatt hours (MWh) to just over 28 million MWh.
Solar industry created jobs at a rate 20 times faster than the national average, according to the Energy Department, while 102,000 more workers also joined the wind turbine industry last year, a 32% increase. In fact, 93% of the new power in America is now coming from solar, natural gas, and wind -- but it's building out new solar-generating capacity that's causing much of the workforce increases, according to the Energy Department. "The majority of U.S. electrical generation continues to come from fossil fuels," their report points out, adding that the latest projections show that will still be true in the year 2040.
Solar industry created jobs at a rate 20 times faster than the national average, according to the Energy Department, while 102,000 more workers also joined the wind turbine industry last year, a 32% increase. In fact, 93% of the new power in America is now coming from solar, natural gas, and wind -- but it's building out new solar-generating capacity that's causing much of the workforce increases, according to the Energy Department. "The majority of U.S. electrical generation continues to come from fossil fuels," their report points out, adding that the latest projections show that will still be true in the year 2040.
Hear that sound? That's the coal train pulling out of the station.
Choo Choo!!
This is what happens when we have a Democrat in the WH. Even with gasoline prices much lower than they were mid-2008 (when it was well over $3), people have gotten the message that fossil fuels contribute to climate change, and we need to find alternatives.
Now think of what would've happened if a bozo like Trump had been elected in 2008 (and I realize he didn't run back then, but McCain was more of a foreign policy guy so I'm not as certain what he would have done). He would've said drill, baby, drill, including all the coasts and protected wetlands, as the way out of the Great Recession.
So the American coal industry is so wrecked by Obama it's now as profitable as if they were treehuggers. Folks, this is what's happened to coal in this country because of obscene government regulations and now that coal companies can't dump mercury in rivers it's becoming really hard for people owning coal mines to even survive. The world is laughing at us. China is laughing at us. But it stops right now, folks.
So if Trump wants to create jobs in America he'd better dump coal and support wind and solar.
The goal is energy, not employment. We don't build factories and plants to keep people busy...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Labor Intensive Solar Power Still Not Price Competitive.
Where's nuclear?
Have gnu, will travel.
Reading comprehension much? Employs more workers, not just growing faster.
While it may be nice for the treehuggers out there, just how many of these solar energy jobs actually pay something close to a living wage?
The oil industry employs far more people that solar. What this article is saying is, the number of people employed in the generation of electricity from solar is bigger than the number of people employed in the generation of electricity from oil, coal and gas. Only a tiny fraction of the oil in this country is used to generate electricity.
...is that solar energy is not only less efficient with its physical footprint, but it's allocation of human labor. Solar still provides only a small percentage of our energy output, yet uses more labor than all the other forms combined? That's called INEFFICIENCY. It's a bug, not a feature.
Yeah, and a full half of them are in the employment of cold-calling marketers.
Of electricity generated in the U.S., solar generates just 0.6% of the total. Coal, gas, and oil generates 67% of it.
So what this stat means is that it takes 110x more people to generate each kWh of electricity with solar than with fossil fuels. If anything, this is an excellent argument for not using solar to generate electricity.
Solar power workers are all elitist - their jobs don't count. Coal-miners will make 'Murica Grate Again! If we had taken the oil when we had a chance all those radical Moslem terrorists would be gone now! It's the Mexicans fault - we'll build a wall around Saudi Arabia and make those rapists and murderers pay for it. If they don't I'll grab every woman that wants an abortion by the pussy! The news media is the opposition! Not sure about the Pope yet, I'll tell you Monday. Sad.
Not as far as President Cheeto is concerned. Management is a cost, but you don't really need to pay for labor!
Why not hook people up to bicycle generators then ?
Solar is .6% of our power but employs but employs more people than the rest of the power industry ???
https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs...
extrapolating out, to get all our power from solar it would take half the 100 million people in the labor force
essential fragment from the report (page 28):
Proportionally, solar employment accounts for the largest share of workers in the Electric Power Generation sector. This is largely due to the construction related to the significant buildout of new solar generation capacity.
On pages 37+ there are some graphs with employment category distribution and construction and installation accounts for over 37% of solar employment (compared to less then 5% in coal and not even on graph for oil and gas.
Could have something to with what trump is trying to do so far: send us back into a worse recession than the one we WERE in and wreck the environment while doing it.
Why is this an anti-Trump article? And what makes it "SJW"?
This is from the executive summary of the DOE report:
"Electric Power Generation and Fuels technologies directly employ more than 1.9 million workers. In 2016, 55 percent, or 1.1 million, of these employees worked in traditional coal, oil, and gas, while almost 800,000 workers were employed in low carbon emission generation technologies, including renewables, nuclear, and advanced/low emission natural gas. Just under 374,000 individuals work, in whole or in part, for solar firms, with more than 260,000 of those employees spending the majority of their time on solar."
The author, like the Forbes magazine author who originated the lie, counts temporary construction jobs in the renewable column and ignores fuel jobs for fossil. Intellectual honesty is overrated, right?
Yeah. Stupid liburl snowflakes.. We won! Suck it up! Everything is Fine!
Trump's your Alt-President now!
Why won't you just bend over and take it in the obummer?
His son is autistic which proves Trump is defective and needs to be sterilized to make sure he does t breed again. We need more anti-Trump articles to increase support for his sterilization. We need to make sure there's not another moron Barron.
Kind of misleading to lump construction work as being part of "energy generation" for solar jobs, while leaving off the jobs dedicated to extraction of fuels for fossil fuel industry.
"About 62 percent of all mining and extraction employment in the United States is for fuels used
in energy production—this translates to roughly 468,000 workers in Q1 2016. These workers
support the Fuels industry through crude petroleum and natural gas extraction, as well as
surface and underground coal mining."
According to the report, if you add the number of jobs in fossil fuels energy power generation sector and the mining and extraction sector, the total comes to 1,037,755 jobs (coal + natural gas + oil/petroleum).
"These shifts in electric generation source are mirrored in the sector’s changing employment
profile, as the share of natural gas, solar, and wind workers increases, while coal mining and
other related employment is declining. It is important to note, however, that the majority of U.S.
electrical generation continues to come from fossil fuels (coal and natural gas) and that, under
latest EIA modeling in the Annual Energy Outlook 2016, will continue to provide 53% of total
U.S. electricity in 2040."
Fossil fuels still produce more energy than solar. Therefore, if solar employs more people, it is far less efficient in terms of labor, maybe even a drag on the economy. People don't seem to realize that "creating more jobs" is only good if those jobs have a net positive effect on productivity. We could junk all earth-moving equipment, and hire millions of ditch-diggers. That would reduce fossil fuel use, and create millions of jobs. Why aren't we doing that? Don't we want to create millions of jobs? Germany should surely do that, because they are so forward-thinking.
If solar has more workers, but only generates 1% of the national energy, doesn't that mean it's horrendously expensive to people buying electricity?
Given that solar accounts for 0.5% of US energy consumed, if the cited employment figures are true then each solar employee is much much less productive than his/her fossil counterpart. We could get a lot more employment in construction if we required all excavation to be done with hand tools, but would that be desirable? Likewise, saying "It employs a lot of people and is therefore good" regarding solar uses the wrong metric for its desirability.
This exact same misleading headline (which doesn't come from either of the linked articles) was frontpaged on Reddit a week ago. Imagine that.
"Solar Energy Now Employs More Americans Than Oil, Coal and Gas Combined" should read "Solar Energy ELECTRICITY GENERATION Now Employs More Americans Than Oil, Coal and Gas ELECTRICITY GENERATION Combined."
While people have been digging coal out of the ground for thousands of years, up until a few hundred years ago, I'd hardly call it an "industry". Coal didn't become a major industry until mass production of steel began to ramp up towards the end of the 18th century.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
In 2016, natural gas alone produced 28,000G GWh. Solar utilities have the *capacity* of 28,081 GWh; how much was actually generated is left unsaid. To be nice, let's also add the 16,974 from non-utility generation; actual amount of energy generated is also left unstated. The natural gas industry employed 392,869 people to generate 28,000 GWh of power. Solar takes 373,807 employees, plus a sketchy 260,077 (this is worse, you'll see why in a sec), for a total of 633,884 employees to produce, with optimal conditions, 28,081 GWh of power. Now, less inputs for greater outputs is the definition of efficiency, and with greater efficiency you consume less resources to produce the same amount of product. This is how wealth is created and waste is minimized. Under an optimal scenario, natural gas production, in terms of employees, is 62% more efficient than solar energy production. Natural gas takes one employee per 14 GWh of energy generated. Solar takes one employee to produce 22.6 GWh of energy; under optimal conditions that *do not exist.* Solar is consuming energy and resources to create unnecessary, make-work jobs, which also removes employees that could be better utilized in productive endeavors. Solar may create jobs, but it's destroying resources to do so. And isn't that counter to what environmentalists claim to want?
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
The facts. Reality has a well-known liberal bias. I thought you knew.
We need to balance bring balance to slashdot. More stories with alt-facts. Alt-reality has a well-known conservative bias.
If his SS were the good guys, they'd make sure he never created another monster like Barron.
I want to die in a hole digging coal. I want my children to die in a hole digging coal.
Murica!!!
Generation of Electricity from Oil, Coal, and Gas Far More Efficient Than Solar.
Greater efficiency makes Oil, Coal, and Gas far cheaper than solar.
Naaa, that cannot be right. President Tumb knows better!
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Solar power is new so there is a build-out of new facilities and is labor intensive. In a few years this statistic will drop noticeably. Only going into new areas can keep the employment numbers high. Oil is an older industry with tremendous efficiencies already built in. The build-out has occurred and is not needed. The processes are very refined (pun intended) and costs have be squeezed out. The oil industry is far less labor intensive than when it began or, even, in the late 1900's. Solar may become as efficient as oil as the solar industry blossoms and matures. Until then, it is a comparison of apples and organges
I think you're confused, or you're posting to the wrong article.
I don't respond to AC's.
Note that the gist of the article is that there are more Americans working in electricity power generation plants running on solar energy than electric power plants running on coal, natural gas, and crude oil. It does not take into account Americans who work in coal mines and in the oil/gas fields.
So if Trump wants to create jobs in America he'd better dump coal and support wind and solar.
I doubt Trump will stand in the way of the solar industry, but he is not going to "dump coal." He carried most of the major coal-producing states including the electoral-college-heavy swing-states of Pennsylvania and Ohio.
He campaigned on bringing back coal-producing jobs. Clinton disappointed coal-voters by campaigning to re-train coal-workers to do other jobs. Whether Trump can deliver is still an open question. The cost of coal compared to other energy-sources, combined with automation, may prevent him from doing so.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Just under 374,000 individuals work, in whole or in part, for solar firms, with more than 260,000 of those employees spending the majority of their time on solar
But it gets worse.
Also included in the employment totals are any firms engaged in facility construction, turbine and other generation equipment manufacturing, as well as wholesale parts distribution of all electric generation technologies.
So manufacturing and distributing solar panels also counts as "generation"?
Before the stupidity-singularity was just a potential event, now we have it.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Amazing amount of human labor is required for a power source that does not produce as much energy as oil, gas, and coal combined.
Not many jobs in nuclear. They're good jobs, but they don't employ many people.
Yeah we should just shut up and let Orange Hitler ruin this country.
Trump campaigned keeping people employed in oil, coal and gas. Clinton did say that she would be putting coal companies out of business, as a result of moving toward renewable energy sources. The article is trying to saying there are more jobs in renewable energy already , which is not true. http://www.politifact.com/trut...
So the article is trying to say Clinton was right, Trump was wrong. Aka SJW liberal article.
Trying to make a little spat between yourself and reality into someone else's problem not working out for you? Cry me a river.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
> Clinton did say that she would be putting coal companies out of business
No, that's what the alt-newsphere claimed she said. What she actually said was all the rich people are fucking you guys, and I'm not going to lie about that. But I will help you to get out from under their thumbs and have a better future.
You were lied to, plain and simple. Watch now as you cling to those lies in the face of hard evidence to the contrary.
In context: Hillary Clinton’s comments about coal jobs
Look, we have serious economic problems in many parts of our country. And Roland is absolutely right. Instead of dividing people the way Donald Trump does, let's reunite around policies that will bring jobs and opportunities to all these underserved poor communities.
So for example, I'm the only candidate which has a policy about how to bring economic opportunity using clean renewable energy as the key into coal country. Because we're going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business, right?
And we're going to make it clear that we don't want to forget those people. Those people labored in those mines for generations, losing their health, often losing their lives to turn on our lights and power our factories.
Now we've got to move away from coal and all the other fossil fuels, but I don't want to move away from the people who did the best they could to produce the energy that we relied on.
So whether it's coal country or Indian country or poor urban areas, there is a lot of poverty in America. We have gone backwards. We were moving in the right direction. In the '90s, more people were lifted out of poverty than any time in recent history.
Because of the terrible economic policies of the Bush administration, President Obama was left with the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, and people fell back into poverty because they lost jobs, they lost homes, they lost opportunities, and hope.
So I am passionate about this, which is why I have put forward specific plans about how we incentivize more jobs, more investment in poor communities, and put people to work.
No, he didn't. Alternative facts much?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Once a system is up and running, shouldn't it be nearly maintenance-free other than keeping the panels clean? If it's mainly construction, then these aren't going to be permanent jobs.
Actually,I think you're confused, or you voted for the wrong president.
This article is highly relevant to Trump, because of his highly public stance and actions on these matters.
LOL if you think the coal jobs will ever return.
They aint coming back, ever. Due exactly to what you said, automation and alt energy sources.
>You were lied to, plain and simple. Watch now as you cling to those lies in the face of hard evidence to the contrary.
"Because we're going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business, right?"
They weren't lied to. She said what she said, and its just that people working in the coal industry didn't believe her about coming through on her renewable energy promises. Unfortunately, for Clinton they did believe her when she said she and Tim were going to put coal companies out of business and coal miners out of work. Construction jobs are a poor substitute for coal jobs.
I bet they are counting the woman at Home Depot who asks me if I want solar panels literally EVERY TIME I walk by her.
The miracle of the feed in tariff, basically paying above the market price for the electricity. In Virginia, it is roughly twice the rate.
http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=11471
Cling hard!
Its really the only thing dingleberries are good at. So do your best!
Lined with solar panels! Win-win!
>Its really the only thing dingleberries are good at. So do your best!
And winning elections. Say AC, tell me again how Hillary won the popular vote. BWHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Winning an election based on lies is like cheating your way through school.
Sure, you passed. But once you graduate you are completely unprepared for the real world.
45 won't last a year before imploding.
Coal is still an important component of steel-manufacturing, although competing technologies are in use and may eventually take over.
IMHO, what we can and should stop doing ASAP is burning coal to make electricity.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Shouldn't you be outside wrecking a Starbucks, or setting a Muslim owned limo on fire? LOL.
I hope you've been bottling all those liberal tears.
You are going to need them when 45 leaves you stranded on a desert island.
>No, that's what the alt-newsphere claimed she said.
No, that's what an actual laid-off coal miner said.
Here's where she flip-flops
https://youtu.be/pM85esUb0iw?t=1m7s
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/05/03/backtracking-clean-energy-clinton-turns-chameleon-coal
Backtracking on Clean Energy, Clinton Turns Chameleon on Coal
Democratic frontrunner accused of flip-flopping on fossil fuels after she is confronted by protests in coal country
Solar panels do not produce much more energy than they take to make.
I don't know where you got this information, but the best I can say is that you are way out of date.
The energy payback time for solar panels is, depending on location, between 0.4 and 1.4 years. Since the lifetime of solar arrays is usually warrantied for 30 years, they produce much more energy than they take to make.
See e.g., https://cleantechnica.com/2013...
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
> He campaigned on bringing back coal-producing jobs. ... The cost of coal compared to other energy-sources, combined with automation, may prevent him from doing so.
Let's put it this way. The Southern Company (big southeast utility company), just finished their first big "clean coal" plant in Mississippi. It's clean in the sense of having the latest scrubbing tech, and the CO2 it produces will be sent down a pipeline to be injected into Gulf Coast oil wells to pump out more oil, and sequester the CO2 underground. It cost *ten times* as much per kW of capacity as utility-scale solar farms in 2016, and solar farms don't need fuel to keep running.
That's why Georgia Power, one of the Southern Co's divisions, is building 2.5 GW of solar in the next few years ( http://www.prnewswire.com/news... ). The Utility's divisions (Georgia Power, Alabama Power, etc.) are divided that way because each state regulates them differently. They are also half-owner of the Vogtle nuclear plant on the GA/SC border, which is adding two new reactors with 2.2 GW capacity.
Coal is dying. Ten years ago it supplied half of the US's electricity. Now it's down to 30%. It's mainly being replaced by Natural Gas, wind, and solar. It just takes a while to replace half the nation's electric capacity. Trump got votes by telling coal-country voters he's bring back jobs, but it ain't happening. According to the Energy Department, ~15 GW of renewable power plants are scheduled to be added in 2017, and 4.7 GW of coal plants shut down. That just continues the trend of the last decade.
Fair points. Thanks. One thing:
Trump got votes by telling coal-country voters he's bring back jobs, but it ain't happening.
You're right. I was being generous when I said it was an "open question." Really it isn't.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
because China is making you look terribly bad. Fast! Gotta do something! Juke up the numbers!
Do you honestly think those people are employed to *generate* each MWh? What, are they all standing around a solar panel carefully angling a mirror at it??
Surely it should be obvious to anyone with half a brain that these people are *installing* solar panels. All those jobs are due to the boom in solar *capacity*, not generation, and their labour now will provide free power for *decades*. Even you would have thought of this, if you weren't in such a hurry to display how wilful your ignorance is.
So if you want to calculate jobs per MWh, first multiply the projected annual output by 30 (probably a lot more, considering how easy it is to replace a panel in an existing installation). Then consider that most of these jobs would be domestic installations, trading scale efficiency for personal empowerment, wide-distribution resiliency, etc.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
>I hope you've been bottling all those liberal tears
I have. They're delicious.
Not a flip-flop.
She said she was going to bring new economic opportunity based on renewable energy tech.
But she never intended to squash coal. She just expected the inexorable market to do it.
And she was right. And it wasn't even renewables that did it, was the coal industry's misguided bet on metallurgical coal that bankrupted the two largest coal companies in the country.
Natural gas from fracking didn't help either.
From the report it says that it takes 337,807 (page 29) jobs in solar to produce 1% of the power? How is that good?
Using the report and then comparing it to the latest energy source report here: http://www.eia.gov/electricity...
I got the following table of GW produced per employee:
Coal - 13.0
Natural gas - 24.6
Nuclear - 10.8
Hydro - 4.3
Solar - 0.09 (Are you kidding me)
Wind - 2.7
This is good news? This makes solar more attractive?
You thinking that kind of rational argument is persuasive on "News for Nerds"?
How many doctors lost their jobs thanks to less air pollution related illness ?
Website Just Down For Me? Find out
Are they counting the dopes hanging around the Home Depot exits who keep asking me if I've ever considered solar? ...or the solar telemarketers?
We can go back to 90 per cent of the population working on farms again...
This junk is finding it's way into Slashdot pretty often. Obviously this is not true. Let's all use less energy instead of pretending our lives are green (they're not).
Solar energy provides about 0.6% of total US energy output. If it "accounts for 43% of the workers in the US power generating industry", that makes it enormously inefficient and wasteful in terms of human labor, and makes claims that it is anywhere near cost competitive with fossil fuels.
Clinton disappointed coal-voters by campaigning to re-train coal-workers to do other jobs.
Which is exactly what we should be doing. The rest of the world is moving to renewables and we're stuck in the 1950's by the baby boomers who refuse to adapt and modernize. And then there's Trump, catalyzing the whole thing. We should be retraining these people into machining jobs as we advance our robotic and energy technology. That's the future, not coal.
They will come back if Trump and the Congress pour in money and effectively make them like Soviet state-owned industries. I wouldn't expect them to do that, but then again, in every conceivable way, they've been worse than my most pessimistic expectations.
Actual output is another.
The sheer number of people needing to work in these industries is indicative of the inefficiency of current projects.
A story has been manipulated (a.k.a. spun, cherry-picked, etc.) by one side of the political spectrum in order to support their views on the subject.
Also, water is wet.
Hitler 2.0 will put an end to solar and all renewable energy. He's going to sign an edict that we all drive coal burning cars and all power plants convert to coal.
Can't let those Chinese out do us now can we?
As I see it, the purpose of government is to correct for market inefficiencies. Presumably a hypothetical perfectly competitive market would not require any government interference, In the opposite case where the service is required to be universal, such as fire protection, postal service, and military defence, it's clear that allowing private ownership of these would amount to a private tax. And in the case of the natural monopoly, we recognize that there are inherently unequal bargaining positions, and well, I suspect most people here know all about rent-seeking behavior anyway. Point being, I think that the view that government has a balancing role to play in the economy is pretty much the definition of centrism, but I'm also pretty sure there are large parts of the United States where anything less than full-throated support for free market capitalism will be viewed as subversive behavior.
"Big government" is merely virtue signaling. I suppose it's what we're reduced to. One feels like some regression towards some mean is rapidly coming due, but what form it will take is hard to guess at.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Does this mean that a lot of electricity comes from solar?
Or does it mean that solar pwer is a labor-intensive way to get electricity?
Sounds like the latter. Maybe someone who cares more than I do will do the math. The metric we're looking for, I think, is human hours per kilowatt-hour. Or something like that.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
Even if just counting the initial energy costs, I still find it hard to believe a worst case of 1.4 years.
Let's do a back of the envelope calculation.
You can buy solar panels for $0.50/watt. If a significant part of that cost was energy cost, then you'd see panels being made primarily in places with cheap energy. But, actually, you don't-- you see them being made in places with cheap labor.
To make numbers easy, suppose 20% of solar panel cost is energy cost, $0.10 per watt, and the energy cost (at industrial prices, not home prices) is $0.10/kW-hr. So, it takes 1000 hours at 1 kW/m2 (nominal 1 sun-- the solar intensity at which the rated power is rated) to do energy return. Typical insolation maps show a global horizontal insolation of about 1500 kW-hrs annually for the middle of the temperate regions we're talking about, so energy return would be in about 2/3 of a year.
That's a back of the envelope, but I wouldn't expect it to be off by more than a factor of two or so.
Insolation link: http://www.greenrhinoenergy.co...
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Most of the energy comes from UV light, not the visible spectrum.
Good thinking, but actually silicon cells (the kind used in low-cost panels) are most sensitive to red and near-IR. You don't get much energy out of the UV part of the solar spectrum-- in fact, usually you want to block most of it in the glass, since UV will tend to yellow the adhesive holding the cells to the glass.
However, the previous poster is also way off base-- geothermal is a lousy solution for most of the planet. Maybe he lives in Iceland (which has lots of geothermal). For most of the planet, geothermal is expensive to access, comes in the form of low-grade heat, and is limited by thermal conductivity of rock. Good for winter/summer thermal averaging, perhaps, but not much more.
I expect that the 0.5 to 1.4 year payback numbers are for places photovoltaic panels are actually used, and not for place like Alaska in winter. (Alaska in summer is pretty good, though, as long as you track the sun)
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Of all the energy in the us solar produces on 1% of output (wind is at 2 percent). Is this really an achievement or waste of human capital?
http://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2016/10/28/13427822/americans-overestimate-renewable-energy
Agreed, coal can't compete with natural gas even before you add in all the expense of carbon capture. One positive to developing and proving a "clean coal" technology however is that other countries that don't have the large supply of cheap natural gas can copy it to reduce their emissions (China and India come to mind).
I think there is one good use for geothermal in most areas, namely heating and cooling homes (and possibly larger buildings). In most of the continental US, the temperature ten or twenty feet underground is a somewhat steady ~50 degrees F (ten C). That means that in the summer, when you need to cool the house, the ground is plenty cool, and a heat pump can transfer that heat; and in the winter, the ground is warmer than the air (for places that go around freezing or below), and again a heat pump can transfer that heat.
Yes, that is what I was referring to when I wrote "Good for winter/summer thermal averaging, perhaps, but not much more."
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
This is the same agency that lists "Green Jobs" as people who drive garbage trucks.
Best wait until the swamp is drained, and agencies are pushed to reporting actual facts rather than driving a political agenda.
Murphy was an optimist
The oil and coal industry cares about profits, not jobs or the environment.
I'm not surprised that solar employs more. Coal, natural gas and oil don't employ a vast army of door-to-door salesmen hounding you to pick their company for solar power.
Solicitors! Take those solar panels and stick 'em where the sun don't shine, I say.