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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!!
Building a wall!
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.
oh shi---- new industry thats been around for 20-30 years grows faster than 1000 yr old industry, news at 11!!!
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.
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.
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.
Can we stop the non-stop anti-Trump articles? Thought it would end after the election but instead we are almost getting more anti-Trump articles.
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.
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?
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."
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
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
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"?
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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"?
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
I mean this literally... other than statistitians, who cares? Every decade or two, when it's time to do statistics, I go to the statistics store, and I statify that they have in stock, within my budget. I couldn't care if it was good, bad, or FairyDust statistics. A statistic is a statistic is a statistic.
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.