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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.
I genuinely want to know if this is a joke comment or not. Are you really arguing in support of coal mines being allowed to dump mercury into rivers?
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.
One of the biggest reasons coal mining jobs are a memory is that the management long ago figured out how much cheaper it is to just hire a handful of people to plant explosives and blow up the whole damn mountain. Who's going to make them hire people to go down into some mines instead of leaving them sitting in a rotting Appalachian cottage drinking water tainted by the slurry? That's what it would take to try to force the clock back, and then, you burn the fuel, have the coal miner's lung, the health care costs, the mercury and lead pollution, and it's going to run out anyway because it takes hundreds of millions of years in a world where fungi haven't yet evolved to consume fallen wood to make all that coal.
But of course, we can keep talking about how inefficient it is to change up a new, rapidly improving technology that's actually beating coal on purely economic costs in more and more of the world.
Damn, remember when this site loved disruptive new technologies that mess with some suit's profit margins? What's the RIAA doing these days?
No it isn't. Solar dramatically lacks economies of scale. It's like the difference between the number of people it takes to service a tuk tuk and the number of people it takes to service a Bugatti Veyron. In general the number is one and two, but in terms of people per kw of engine capacity a tuk tuk manages to employ 100 times more people per kw.
If you used these engines to generate power the figures would look very favourable for the little 6kW 2-stroke. It's a stupid metric.
Yes and no. If you want your society to survive, you make sure people have a basic living in order to survive. It just so happens that in our particular flavor of late-stage capitalism, jobs are required for that.
That doesn't mean jobs are the only way to go. In fact, there's a good chance that we've reached peak jobs and the number of people who need to work to provide for all goods and services will start to shrink. That's when things start to get interesting.
You are welcome on my lawn.
How about the USA joins everybody else and stops using centralised power production and instead start to concentrate on smaller local schemes ?
If you insist on old fashioned nuke stations,why build above ground,you have plenty of old deep workings,3.000 feet of rock is a better shield than a 30 foot thick containment and any shield that could be manufactured..
If something goes horribly wrong with a deep site nuke station,it's simple,bury it,if you try to take them apart after 50 years of useful life,what do you intend to do with all the craps and rubbish ? Oh,bury it,so why not just bury the whole lot in the first place..
That's because you're not liquidating hundreds of million's years worth of accumulated fossil fuel in a century or two. Even leaving alone all the side effects, that was a one-time bonanza. In the meantime, the efficiency of solar has, with a R&D budget that's miniscule in comparison with all that's gone into fossil fuels, has improved by leaps and bounds. http://www.electroschematics.c...
In fact, it's the cheapest form of energy in large swathes of the world already. http://www.popularmechanics.co...
The real problem is that renewable energy does not conform to a centralized model of concentrated wealth accumulation, so wealthy special interests are blowing a lot of smoke in your ears about it.
That's interesting, since there's no heavy metals in mainstream silicon PV technology. (On the other hand, there's apparently plenty of mercury in coal!)
Ezekiel 23:20