Employment In Solar Larger Than Fossil Fuel Sectors

One of the false arguments and misinformation claims put out by the fossil fuel lobbyists is that addressing climate change will hurt the economy by eliminating jobs. This, of course, is shear nonsense. Anyone taking even a few seconds to think about this would realize that someone has to be working in the renewable energy sector. Therefore, as that sector grows, so do the number of jobs.

Now, there's a report that shows exactly that.

The Solar Foundation's National Solar Jobs Census 2015 shows the solar sector is adding jobs at 12 times the rate of the rest of the economy and has grown 123% over the last six years with an increase of over 20% in just one year. The census reports solar now employs 208,859 people in all 50 states. This is more than in either the oil or natural gas construction sectors and nearly three times as large as the entire coal industry workforce of 67,929. And, that growth is expected to continue with an anticipated increase of 14.7% over the next year.

Notably, these jobs by good wages and don't force you to risk your life by working in mines and carcinogenic waste dumps. Both things the coal industry is famous for doing to its employees.

Remember this the next time a denier tells you fixing the problem will cost people their jobs. Not only are the jobs safe, so are the lives and health of the workers. And, it addresses the climate change problem, too.

The Solar Foundation® (TSF) is an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit whose mission is to increase understanding of solar energy through strategic research and education that transform markets. It is not funded by the solar industry.

Is It Feasible to Replace Coal With Solar?

With recent developments on the climate change-fighting front, I had to ask myself if it was feasible to replace all of the coal-fired power plants in the U.S. and replace them with solar cells. Could this be done and stay realistic? To answer that question I began to crunch some numbers.

According to the Energy Information Agency, coal was used to generate 1.58 million thousand megawatt hours of electricity in 2013. These plants had a combined total nominal capacity of about 340 gigawatts. The cost of solar cells is dropping rapidly and is approaching $1 per watt installed capacity. That means it would cost $340 billion to install enough solar cell arrays to replace all of the coal-fired power plants in the U.S. (approximately 1500 power plants). 

Yes, that is a doable number.

But, what about area? Surely, that many solar arrays would take up a lot of land. 

 

Using a figure of .556 m2 per 180 watts ofcapacity, we would need about 1 billion square meters of arrays. That is about 400 square miles. Including space between arrays and room to operate, let's say it roughly 1000 square miles. Using a standard measure of area, that is less than the area of Rhode Island (1200 square miles). To put it another way, it would be a square 32 miles on each side.

Again, this is certainly feasible - especially considering the total area of the coal fired power plants would be available for conversion. 

What about operating expenses?

The average cost to operate a coal-fire power plant is around $7 per megawatt hour = $11 billion per year (using the 1.58 million thousand megawatt hours figure quoted above). Total operating expenses for solar = $0.

Once again, solar compares very favorably.

What about public safety?

Coal is the number one source of mercury in the air and water; the number one source of arsenic in the air and water; the number one source of sulfur dioxide which causes acid rain; the number one manmade source of radioactive particles in the air (coal is usually radioactive); the number one manmade source  particulate matter in the air (leading to a whole host of health problems); and, oh yeah, the number one source of carbon dioxide emissions causing manmade global warming.

Solar? No emissions.

Solar certainly comes out a head on that one.

In summary, even using rough numbers, we find the cost of replacing coal-fire power plants with solar power is reasonable; the land requirements are minimal; the operating expenses are much lower for solar; and the health benefits from getting rid of coal-fired plants are enormous. In short, it is very feasible to replace all coal-fired power plants with solar cells in even the short-term.

So, why aren't we?

California Initiative Has Polluters Pay For Low-Income Solar

California's cap-and-trade system on polluters has raised over $1.6 billion. Now, the Grid Alternatives initiative will use $14.6 million of that to put solar power systems on homes of qualifying low-income families.There will be no cost to the family and it is estimated it will save each family up to $1000 a year in electricity costs. That's a lot of money for some of these families.

This is a great idea. The ones creating the pollution will be the ones paying for it and the people suffering the most from the pollution will be the ones benefiting the most from this program. And, at the same time, it is working to reduce fossil fuel emissions. They hope to install the system on 1600 homes by the end of next year. Oh, and job training is being used to help install them, which means a lot of people are getting valuable training for good jobs.

I don't know how the deniers are going to complain about this, but I am sure they will. After all, it hurts their billionaire fossil fuel buddies, so there has to be something wrong with it. Right?