
US Has More Solar Workers Than Coal Miners - prostoalex
http://www.businessinsider.com/us-has-more-solar-workers-than-coal-miners-2014-7
======
TallGuyShort
I don't think this is significant. They're counting the entire solar industry
against one very specific role in a specific fossil fuel industry. What about
all the people working on coal plants and the related infrastructure? What
about all the people working in oil & gas?

Given how such a small percentage of US energy is solar, if it required more
man power than coal plants I'd take it as a sign that we're doing something
seriously unsustainable in the way we do solar.

edit: good points in the responses

~~~
cleverjake
A common argument against renewable energy pushes is how it hurts the coal
jobs - at least in areas like pennsylvania, kentucky, and west virginia. A
"they're tryna take er jerbs" argument is a good way to get voters out against
it when most people are in the industry, or have parents, siblings, inlaws, or
relatives that would loose a job if that happened.

~~~
firebones
Interesting. None of those states would seem high on the list of states with
great potential for renewables (too dense for wind, not enough sun or open
space for solar). But if you could hack that--for instance, offer clean, less-
dangerous aboveground jobs at comparable or better wages--wouldn't the workers
flock to them?

The deep-pocketed, lobbying mine owners on the other hand...

Maybe the hack is for those states to get the mine owners established in the
manufacturing supporting renewables. Smooth transition, ready workforce.

~~~
toomuchtodo
> Maybe the hack is for those states to get the mine owners established in the
> manufacturing supporting renewables. Smooth transition, ready workforce.

Those states will bend over backwards to accommodate the coal industry, but
they're not going to put any programs together for the actual workers. You
would need either a non-profit or a renewables industrialist (Elon?) to put a
program together to train and/or relocate these workers to better jobs.

~~~
firebones
Yeah, I don't expect the typical OSHA-ignoring mine owner to adapt to a new
economy, and they probably have achieved enough regulatory capture to keep out
competing tech, but state lines are porous, and labor is relatively mobile, so
if opportunity beckons across state lines, economic rationality may prevail.

So states bordering coal states--the ball is in your court!

I see plenty of wind farms and rigs on the interstate transporting large
turbines to Iowa and Kansas, so maybe the labor will reallocate.

~~~
toomuchtodo
I'm of the mind that we should be making an active effort to recruit coal
miners into the renewable industry; there's a whole lot of wind turbines and
solar capacity left to install, and those are much safer, healthy, and I'd
argue better paying jobs that the coal industry.

I'm biased though, and think the coal industry should be starved of resources
as quickly as possible.

------
dredmorbius
On the positive side: it appears that solar energy is highly effective as an
employment generator.

On the negative side: the fraction of electricity generation provided by solar
vs. coal is a very small fraction, meaning that you're looking at _far_ more
workers per GWh of actual energy production.

The 8 month total generation for 2012 includes 12,346 GWh of solar PV, vs.
1,105,161 GWh for coal generation.

[http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/sec7_5.pdf](http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/sec7_5.pdf)

This means that a solar worker is responsible for 0.087 GWh of generation. A
coal miner is responsible for 8.968 GWh of electricity generation.

At this rate, we'd require 32.11 _million_ workers in solar to replace
existing coal generation capacity. While that would be a strongly effective
employment program, it would also be devoting a vastly larger portion of the
United States' labor force to the task of energy provisioning.

That's a significant chunk of the 147.3 million total civilian workforce as of
October, 2014, at 22%.

[http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.a.htm](http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.a.htm)

~~~
anigbrowl
Isn't the largest labor input for solar in manufacturing and installation,
rather than maintenance? Using your example of 12,346 GWh of solar PV for
2012, wouldn't those solar installations have produced the same amount of
power (or close to it) in 2013 without any additional labor input, plus
whatever new capacity was installed in 2013, resulting a higher GWh:worker
ratio?

~~~
Animats
Home solar installation costs are too high. Rocky Mountain Institute, 2011:
"Total soft costs—including customer acquisition; installation labor;
permitting, inspection, and interconnection (PII); and margin and other
associated costs—now make up approximately 70% of the total installed priced
for a U.S. residential PV system."

[http://www.rmi.org/cms/Download.aspx?id=11218&file=2014-11_R...](http://www.rmi.org/cms/Download.aspx?id=11218&file=2014-11_RMI-
AustraliaSIMPLEBoSFinal.pdf)

Australia and Germany have lower costs per KW installed, but the installation
cost exceeds panel cost even there. This is a big problem. Even if panel cost
goes to 0, installed cost will be maybe half what it is now.

Solar panels which are also roof components have been suggested for new
construction, but that requires more roof design standardization than the
housing industry is used to.

There are also "off-roof electrical costs". A solar installation usually
requires a new meter box and additional boxes for inverters, control gear, and
disconnects. Standardizing how solar systems connect at the meter box would
simplify that.

The norm in Australia is now a one-day install. The US and Germany run slower,
partly because more waterproofing is required. ("Every hole in the roof is a
dagger through the heart of a house")

~~~
dredmorbius
Good data, and yes, RMI have done some studies on this.

"Even if panel cost goes to 0, installed cost will be maybe half what it is
now."

I've drawn the relationship between this and Amdahl's law, in parallel
computing. As parallelization increases, it's the serial component of
processing which comes to dominate. Eventually you reach a point where further
parallelization yields no benefit.

I'm curious about your username. I know of animats from Carl Zimmer's article
on them a ways back, and found the concepts of complexity and capabilities in
evolution fascinating.

------
tptacek
Unfortunately, the solar workers are not as effective a voting bloc as the
coal workers, who are concentrated geographically.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
And solar workers have a higher injury rate, so attrition.

~~~
antr
Let me call bullshit on your comment:
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-
de...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-
price-always-paid/)

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Do you have that per worker? Per megawatt is the societal cost; not the most
important stat to the guy on the roof.

Sorry I was away; I didn't think this would ignite such passion. It can be
unintuitive how dangerous an occupation can be.

Here's some stats: [http://www.deseretnews.com/top/2919/2/9-Electrical-power-
lin...](http://www.deseretnews.com/top/2919/2/9-Electrical-power-line-
installers-and-repairers-The-10-most-dangerous-jobs-in-America.html)

Note: construction and electrical workers are in the top 10, with solar
installers being members of both groups so may be hard to estimate their
number. But its around 20 deaths per 100,000 per year! Add Roofer at near 40,
and again solar panel installers are in this group. Compared to mining around
27.

So I admit my original comment was based on a news article, that I recall
quoted solar installer at the top of their dangerous occupation list. No
reference to give for that, so I withdraw my assertion.

~~~
antr
Given that solar is less than 1% of global energy production and installed
capacity, you can still calculate the absolute numbers. Additionally, roof
mounted solar is a very (very, very, very) small fraction of total installed
solar capacity as the majority is ground mounted i.e. the large >500kw plants.
Having started my career in energy this "roof" argument only pops up when
talking to non-energy folks, as the real meat (installed capacity) is in
remote, high radiation locations, far away from what people understand by
solar (roof).

~~~
JoeAltmaier
I believe all that. Still, its more per-megawatt calculating. Are large farms
installed using automated processes (large prefab panels, cranes etc)? Then
the per-worker death rates may be significantly affected by the roofers, who
are likely numerous.

~~~
antr
Feel free to share global coal mining and coal plant construction death
numbers with all of us... that previous link (with lack of sources) doesn't
talk about global solar installation, nor global coal mining (as the US has
been a net importer of coal for decades) it's wishful thinking not to count
mining accidents from imported coal, isn't it?

What you can't do is compare part of one value chain (just coal plant
construction) which is 100% reliant on coal mining, and later compare it to
solar which is then 100% operational. But feel free to compare apples and
oranges, it just shows the value of your argument.

I'm sure coal mining + power plants accidents/deaths is orders of magnitude
larger than all solar technologies.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
I did share (above); for mining its around 27/10,000/year. Which is
commensurate with solar installation/construction/electrical. And roofing (for
those in solar that do work on roofs) is near 40.

And yes, this is probably a red herring, since rooftop solar is bound to
recede into insignificance and solar farms continue to grow in generation
capacity.

Also, its weird to compare solar installation with coal mining (instead of for
instance coal plant construction).

------
MisterBastahrd
This is apples and oranges. They're comparing coal miners to people who are
primarily engaged in building or installing solar panels. If you want a true
comparison along those lines, you'd need to account for every person working
at a coal-fired power plant or working on a coal-based power source (like
antique trains).

------
api
While I'm generally pro-solar, more workers is _not_ an inherent good with an
energy source... quite the opposite. The idea of energy is to require as few
workers as possible so that human attention and labor can be spent on other
things.

This is likely directly related to the fact that coal has a higher EROEI than
solar (neglecting long-term externalities of course).

~~~
dredmorbius
Higher EROEI and much more concentrated capital.

For every square meter of PV deployed, you start with 1 kW of incident
sunlight, reduced by the panel efficiency (~15%), capacity factor (~25%), the
shading/spacing factor (~55%), and inverter efficiency (~90%). Your panels
have a nominal life of 20 years after which they must be replaced.

On a square-meter basis, the raw output of a coal-fired plant is vastly
higher. That footprint is extended by mining operations, fuel transport
(mostly railroad), and tailings and ash disposal. It's still pretty high.

That said, I'd prefer to see approaches to increasing solar worker efficiency
rather than prolonging use of coal.

~~~
reportingsjr
I don't see why a power output per square meter metric would be worth
comparing. The amount of space solar takes up shouldn't really matter that
much.

I do believe that solar farms are a pretty bad idea and panels should be put
on roof tops more than anywhere else. Roof top solar solves more problems than
farms. It helps keep roofs cooler during summer which can help reduce the heat
island effect. It also doesn't take up space that is becoming more precious
all of the time.

~~~
dredmorbius
Because that square meter represents capital infrastructure which must be
built, maintained, integrated into the grid (inverters, transmission lines),
and eventually replaced and updated.

Again, don't get me wrong: I think there's absolutely no question that our
future will rely primarily on renewable and sustainable energy sources. The
question to me isn't _whether_ this will be the case, but if it will be a
high-tech renewable energy infrastructure (with electricity, grids, etc.) or
low-tech: farms, grains, and draught animals.

The costs of renewable energy strike me as vastly higher than most of the
general public seems to think. You'll get fossil-fuel fans arguing this as a
reason that _renewables_ aren't viable. I think that's a misplaced argument of
a legitimate concern: it's whether or not a technological civilization is
viable.

I don't know one way or the other. I think we're skating really, really close
to the edge.

Erik Lindberg's recent Resiliance / Transition Milwaukee piece, "Six Myths
About Climate Change that Liberals Rarely Question", lays out most of these
factors:

[http://www.resilience.org/stories/2014-11-26/six-myths-
about...](http://www.resilience.org/stories/2014-11-26/six-myths-about-
climate-change-that-liberals-rarely-question)

Back to that output area.

If I'm reading EIA's capacity data correctly, there are about 313 GW of
installed coal generating capacity in the US. Let's double that on a basis of
capacity factor, plant maintenance, and other factors.

[http://www.eia.gov/electricity/capacity/](http://www.eia.gov/electricity/capacity/)

(Stealth edit: and another source confirms 557 coal plants as of 2012.
[http://www.eia.gov/electricity/annual/html/epa_04_01.html](http://www.eia.gov/electricity/annual/html/epa_04_01.html)
)

GRIST, an environmental site, allows for one square mile (640 acres) for a
nominal 1 GW power plant. So we're talking about a maximum of around 600
square miles dedicated to coal plant capital itself. That's a region 24.5
miles on a side.

[http://grist.org/article/2010-11-17-which-has-bigger-
footpri...](http://grist.org/article/2010-11-17-which-has-bigger-footprint-
coal-plant-or-solar-farm/)

And note that I'm _not_ talking about total land-use footprint: coal storage,
transport, mining, and disposal all have footprints, and they're substantial.
But most of them are also pretty non-technical -- a mine, after all, is for
the most part a hole in the ground, not a machine.

But of that square mile, the bulk of it isn't actually technical
infrastructure. An Indian engineering report puts the main plant at 4.6% of
total land area for a 5 x 800 MW plant, 92 acres. That's 43.4 MW/acre.

Which means that of the 600 square miles devoted to coal power plant siting,
only 11.25 mi^2 of that is actually coal plant itself -- the rest is (mostly)
much less technical land use.

[http://www.cea.nic.in/reports/land_review_report.pdf](http://www.cea.nic.in/reports/land_review_report.pdf)

By comparison, with a nominal 1 kW/m^2 of incident sunlight, you're _starting_
with 4 MW/acre available energy. By the time you apply PV efficiency (15%),
spacing factor (55%), capacity factor (30%), and inverter efficiency, you're
down to 0.09 MW/acre delivered energy. You'll need 477 acres _of solar
infrastructure_ to provide the same output as a single acre of coal plant.

GNU units is handy for calculating various factors, and we can compute how
much area needs to be dedicated to an equivalent amount of solar generating
capacity:

    
    
        You have: 313 GW / (1 kW/m^2 * 0.15 * 0.55 * 0.3 * 0.9)
        You want: mile^2
    	    * 5425.3637
    	    / 0.00018431944
    

That is: we'd need 5,425 square miles, or a region 73 miles on a side.

(Note I've omitted considerations such as storage or other factors -- this
analysis is favorable to solar power.)

There are a lot of other factors you can consider. Coal plants generally don't
do well sited immediately adjacent to other land uses: agriculture,
residential, commercial, or even industrial. You can park solar panels on top
of pretty much anything -- they're nonrivalrous for much human activity
(though they compete with ag for access to sunlight). That's not what I'm
considering.

But even with that, you've got to provide:

⚫ Mounting / foundation structures.

⚫ Panels themselves.

⚫ Rectifiers.

⚫ Grid interconnects.

All of those represent installation costs.

Once installed, there is some maintenance required as well. I _don 't_ have
good cost data on this, or labor requirements. But if nothing else, someone's
got to move through the installation, and area means distance means time.

If you want to go further with solar power and allow for excess capacity to
provide for storage, fuel synthesis (I suspect that's going to be part of the
equation), and substitution for _other_ energy uses (e.g., not just present
electrical consumption), then you're talking land-use that's hundreds of miles
on a side for the US alone. This would be a substantial portion of a large
state (say: Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, etc.). Yes, the land use can be
broken up and distributed across other states, but you simply cannot get away
from the fact that it's a lot of area, _and_ that you're parking a highly
technical infrastructure on it.

And if you think _this_ is a pessimistic analysis, try calculating land-use
requirements for biofuels given per-acre productions of 30-300 gallons/acre-
year for typical oil crops (corn, canola, hemp), and 6.75 billion barrels of
present US annual oil consumption. There are about 409 million acres of arable
land in the U.S., and 2,379 million acres total. Try it yourself with GNU
units or Wolfram+Alpha.

~~~
reportingsjr
Hmmm, I still don't think that is a valid metric to measure both by. There are
too many variables and analogies to make it a good comparison. There is a
huuuuugggeee variable you didn't even talk about which is the electric grid.
Huge amounts of land is taken up for this and it is very expensive to
maintain. One of the reasons I want solar is because where I live (midwest US)
falling trees/branches during wind storms and snow storms causes lots of down
time.

I could go on about other things, but I still think comparing the land use of
both of them is fairly ridiculous.

~~~
dredmorbius
Which aspects of the electric grid?

You've got long-distance transmission. The issue here isn't the power losses
(actually fairly low and constant at about 6%), but the per-mile costs: $1m -
$2m. Even on linear distance, that's not _too_ bad, but if you're creating a
situation where you've got to have high-capacity transmission _all over the
place_ (areal, not lineal density), it starts adding up. That's one of the
costs the Solar Fucking Idiot Roadways people failed to take into account.

There are interconnects -- basically inverters and busses which feed back into
the grid. I don't have a lot of details on this, but you're basically
allocating some of this per specific facility of installed solar.

And then there's grid management. The issue with solar is that it's
_variable_. That _doesn 't_ mean "unpredictable", as you actually _can_
predict with very high accuracy 24-72 hours in advance (long enough to take
actions) what your supply and demand will be. I've been commenting recently on
G+ about the German Fraunhoffer Institute's solar energy who discusses high
and low cost points for per MWh electrical costs. There were several of these
in 2014, each tied to specific forecasting misses. Generally, either renewable
power sources were over or under estimated, or demand was.

Storage, demand-side management, and other options might impose various costs
of their own though.

------
diafygi
I have a startup in solar, and the thing I don't think people are
understanding here is the unbelievable amount of growth that is starting to
happen in solar. We're talking 400x growth in the next 40 years[1].

So far, the solar industry has reached grid parity (i.e. unsubsidized costs <=
retail cost from the grid) in a few U.S. states and several countries[2]. When
it has reached grid parity in these locations, you see a huge inflow of
investment capital since there's little regulatory risk[3].

This trend will not change. Solar will only get cheaper, and fossil fuels will
only get more expensive. So what happens in 10-20 years when solar is at or
below grid parity in most of the world? Mix that financial advantage with a
huge political movement to fight climate change (e.g. stop Colorado from
burning down every other year), and you have the formula for another whale
oil-style shift in energy.

I'm originally a chemical engineer from Texas, and I have a standing $100 bet
with two of my friends who work in the petroleum industry that they will not
retire in an oil job. Anyone else want to take that bet?

Finally, we're hiring[4].

[1]: [http://www.pvsolarreport.com/the-next-
internet/](http://www.pvsolarreport.com/the-next-internet/)

[2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_parity#Rapid_uptake](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_parity#Rapid_uptake)

[3]: [http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/16/solar-yield-
idUSL4...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/16/solar-yield-
idUSL4N0JE2NU20140116)

[4]: [https://angel.co/utilityapi/jobs/44943-software-
engineer](https://angel.co/utilityapi/jobs/44943-software-engineer)

~~~
cstavish
I'd like to know your thoughts on today's cheap oil prices-- assuming oil
stays around $70-80 a barrel for the next few years, do you see that slowing
down solar development/investment? In other words, do people keep their "eyes
on the prize" so to speak, or are they dissuaded by temporarily cheap oil
prices?

~~~
diafygi
It's actually kind of interesting. I think it might be helpful globally for
clean energy. Cheap oil means people won't feel as much pain if a carbon tax
is put in place to compensate for the externalities of using fossil fuels. So
this is an opportunity for political movements in countries to push through a
carbon tax now. Then when the price of oil goes back up (i.e. after OPEC has
driven out the frackers and hurt Russia sufficiently), the carbon tax will
make clean energy more competitive. I personally think that OPEC is shooting
themselves in the foot over the long term with this move.

------
tedunangst
> counted 142,698 employees

There are about three times that many people employed growing corn, however.
So should we switch all our power plants to corn based ethanol?

~~~
ChrisGaudreau
Except that corn is used for more than just ethanol.

~~~
tedunangst
About one third of all corn turns into ethanol, meaning the worker count is
actually equal.

------
tn13
This seems like bad news. Given the ratio of Solar:Coal as source of power
generation in US, ideally we would expect the Solar workers to be far less.
This is a scaling problem.

