
Solar Now Provides Twice as Many Jobs as the Coal Industry - doener
https://www.fastcoexist.com/3068125/solar-now-provides-twice-as-many-jobs-as-the-coal-industry
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wbillingsley
An electrician whose company advertises it installs solar panels gets counted
as a "full-time employee in the solar industry" even if installing solar
panels is a minuscule part of the business -- they are a full-time employee
(of the company) and the company is "in the solar industry" because installing
solar panels is a service it offers.

It's equivalent to counting every housebuilder in the country as "employment
in the automotive industry" because they install garage doors on some of their
houses.

Solar's economic advantage is that it doesn't require many jobs. The panel on
your roof just sits there producing electricity, with no need for regular
shipments of coal to be transported to it by train... It shifts power
production from an ongoing cost to a fairly small capital cost.

~~~
JauntyHatAngle
> An electrician whose company advertises it installs solar panels gets
> counted as a "full-time employee in the solar industry" even if installing
> solar panels is a minuscule part of the business -- they are a full-time
> employee (of the company) and the company is "in the solar industry" because
> installing solar panels is a service it offers.

Not saying you're wrong, but where does it state this? I didn't want to
download the full report to check myself as it asks for email/name etc and so
it'll have to wait until I get home. But all I could find on that was:

"Since 2010, the National Solar Jobs Census has defined solar workers as those
who spend at least 50 percent of their time on solar-related work."

Which could be taken either way.

As an extension, are you saying they define "solar related work" as working >
50% of your time for any company which is any part of the solar industry? And
if so, could you tell me where they state that?

~~~
diafygi
My company takes the census every year (because we're in the solar industry),
and it just asks if you're primarily in the solar industry. It also asks what
other industries you're in and what the split is and how many of your
employees do what split of work.

So it's fairly detailed.

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bpodgursky
Don't get me wrong, I want solar power to replace coal as much as possible.

But if this is accurate, I'm not sure it's a good sign for solar, since solar
power provides 1.3% of US power, vs 35% for coal.

I'm sure that there are higher labor costs installing solar vs running
established coal plants... but that's 70x the labor of coal.

A labor cost that high would mean that solar costs will never become
competitive with coal in the open market. So I'm hoping these numbers are
exaggerated or just wrong.

~~~
Nition
That's what I was thinking. It's not really a good thing if it takes a huge
amount more people to generate the same amount of power.

~~~
Gibbon1
It's tricky to compare though. Consider.

The cost of coal is mostly the cost of the raw material inputs. And coal has a
significant off the books negative externalilty because of CO2 emissions and
environmental destruction.

vs

Solar which has a high labor cost component. Noting that providing jobs for
large numbers of lower skilled workers is an off the books positive
externality.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
In what way is employing people in an offical capacity (you pay them, withhold
income tax, holiday pay, health cover, superannuation (401k or whatever you
call it) _off the books_?

Don't these data get reported to government, and worker on academic and
corporate economists? Who endeavour to account for the effects of employment
in an econo-socio-politio-historic evaluation of the world.

~~~
Gibbon1
> off the books?

It's counted as a 'cost' but over the big picture it's not.

It's like this economics teaches us that labor is a cost to be minimized. All
good and well except if workers have no money they can't buy anything.

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11thEarlOfMar
How many solar jobs will persist over time? Once the market is filled, there
will still need to be maintenance and replacement when systems wear out. Seems
like a pretty involved model to construct, but would be interesting
nonetheless.

Broad assumptions:

IF all residential structures in the US had their own solar systems:

44 million residential structures [0]

4-person crew works 4 days to install = 16 man-days

250 work days per year

30 year useful life [1]

= 2.816 million full-time jobs

Naturally, not all residential structures will go solar. And, there are many
solar-related jobs besides rooftop installers.

How will a migration to solar impact the current electric utility employment?
Net gain or loss?

[0]
[http://www.nmhc.org/Content.aspx?id=4708#Structures](http://www.nmhc.org/Content.aspx?id=4708#Structures)
[1] [http://energyinformative.org/lifespan-solar-
panels/](http://energyinformative.org/lifespan-solar-panels/)

~~~
padseeker
You haven't even considered how the technology may evolve where it may become
more efficient. The solar technology of today could be obsolete and it may be
cost effective to upgrade in 10-15 years due to efficiency/cost gains.

As far as solar related jobs you have the manufacturing and delivery of solar
panels, all the related industries for raw materials, etc for solar panels and
then the installation. That's quite a few jobs.

Also you need to consider jobs outside the US, even the North American
continent. Solar may be more expensive than other sources in the US but that's
because we have an electrical grid. Solar is the most cost efficient option
when considering the developing world, i.e. Africa, parts of Asia, etc. Those
solar panels are more likely to come from outside the US, i.e. China, as the
dollar exchange value as well as delivery might make it cost prohibitive for
developing nations to purchase solar panels from the US.

~~~
barney54
I'm not so sure that solar is cheaper in the developing world. As these Indian
villagers said protesting solar, "we want real electricity, not fake
electricity."
[http://www.eenews.net/stories/1060026477](http://www.eenews.net/stories/1060026477)

~~~
michaelmrose
Solar is not a magic wand. People who couldn't afford to get hooked up to the
grid for the last 36 YEARS were gifted a limited solution that cost far more
than their little village could afford. The wealthy celebrated by hooking up
more appliances than the system could handle and then all the recipients of
all this free stuff complain that johnny can't study by the light of the
silvery cfl.

When some are just plugging in a lightbulb and a phone and others are plugging
in "energy-inefficient televisions and refrigerators" perhaps either the
wealthier should abstain from doing so or should instead invest in more
capacity.

On a larger scale this would be accomplished with meters and prices that would
make using 100x more juice than your neighbor either uneconomical or at least
costly enough to build infrastructure but on this scale it would have to have
been solved by common sense which like electricity appears to have been
scarce.

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eridius
> "... according to a new survey from the nonprofit Solar Foundation."

You should take this with a pretty big grain of salt, because I'm pretty sure
something called the Solar Foundation isn't an unbiased source.

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musgrove
Get those labor costs down from having to have so many presumably high-skilled
workers, and it may start to be a little more competitive with coal price-
wise, which is what it's all about.

~~~
heygrady
According to the article, they are not highly skilled workers.

> Many of the jobs are also accessible to people who might otherwise struggle
> to find well-paying jobs. An entry-level worker without a degree can
> conceivably double their salary within a year, from $10-$12 an hour for
> simple manual labor to $20-$23 an hour. The median wage posted for solar
> installer jobs in 2016 was $26 an hour.

~~~
Gibbon1
> from $10-$12 an hour for simple manual labor to $20-$23 an hour.

What that says to me is jobs installing solar have higher productivity than
other available low skilled jobs.

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woodandsteel
The article says 40 coal plants were shut down last year.

Global warming skeptics like our current president want us to stay on fossil
fuels forever. They don't seem to realize the issue has already been decided,
and fossil fuels are going to be increasingly replaced by renewable energy.

Does anyone really think that, fifty or a hundred years from now, our
electricity will still be produced by coal and natural gas, and our cars still
powered by gasoline?

