The argument about GWh/working is an interesting way to look at the world.
We need to remember that solar capacity has long life-span (say ~25 years minimum) per panel. Where coal needs to be constantly mined and burned.
If you multiple 0.087*25 years of operation you get 2.175GWh/worker in solar.
Now, there are an almost endless numbers of adjustments you can make to this calculation. And you really need to use the "newly installed capacity/year" number when multiplying by the lifespan of the panels.
I think the calculation is more complicated than you make it seem. And it's not surprising that the cost to install a long-life span technology is relatively high (in terms of man-power) as solar is in its infancy.
(I say infancy b/c I believe we'll be far more efficient at making and installing solar cells 30 years from now than we are today. I expect coal mining to make smaller efficiency gains.)
Finally, jobs are a great thing. YC put out a RFS looking for ~1million new jobs:
https://www.ycombinator.com/rfs/#million
I'd love to see them created in solar.
Panel lifetime is generally given as a nominal 20-25 years. That's not a minimum. The reason is a gradual degradation, mean of 0.8%, median 0.5% of output per year, due to multiple causes. See: "Photovoltaic Degradation Rates: An Analytical Review", Dirk C. Jordan and Sarah R. Kurtz, NREL
I would like to know how the employment numbers here are calculated, and how they're allocated across the lifetime of solar plant. I'm not trying to knock solar, I'm showing that it's quite possible to have too much of a good thing though.
CleanTechnica is generally a pretty reliable source. US EIA gives 3.2 GW nameplate capacity for solar as of 2012: http://www.eia.gov/electricity/annual/html/epa_04_03.html Installations have been going at a major clip, so 4.8 GW sounds highly plausible.
"I think the calculation is more complicated than you make it seem."
It almost certainly is. However my point was that it's also a bit less straightforward than the BusinessInsider piece presents. Believe me, I'd like to see good jobs in the solar sector. But I'd really like for those to be productive jobs.
I do think that solar will continue to see cost reductions (and those will be key to its success). Addressing factors other than just efficiency (mostly overrated), and in particular, the installation, durability, and maintenance costs, are what I suspect are key.
Jobs ... are complicated. My point isn't so much that they're good or bad, more that if the trends reported are projected forward, we'll see a very large portion of the labor force directly employed in energy harvesting. This isn't the end of the world, but it does mean that roughly 1 in 5 present jobs will be supersceded. There was an earlier time when energy harvesting occupied a similar or larger portion of the workforce, though it was called "farming" at the time. In some countries it still comprises 90% or more of all work.
This plays into another discussion -- that of EROEI and what levels of it are required to support various levels of economic and technological complexity.
We need to remember that solar capacity has long life-span (say ~25 years minimum) per panel. Where coal needs to be constantly mined and burned.
If you multiple 0.087*25 years of operation you get 2.175GWh/worker in solar.
Now, there are an almost endless numbers of adjustments you can make to this calculation. And you really need to use the "newly installed capacity/year" number when multiplying by the lifespan of the panels.
(These people say the US installed 4.8GW in 2013: http://cleantechnica.com/2014/03/18/37-gw-solar-capacity-ins... I have really no idea if that's accurate)
I think the calculation is more complicated than you make it seem. And it's not surprising that the cost to install a long-life span technology is relatively high (in terms of man-power) as solar is in its infancy.
(I say infancy b/c I believe we'll be far more efficient at making and installing solar cells 30 years from now than we are today. I expect coal mining to make smaller efficiency gains.)
Finally, jobs are a great thing. YC put out a RFS looking for ~1million new jobs: https://www.ycombinator.com/rfs/#million I'd love to see them created in solar.