9 ms·

Can Wind Power Revive Jobs in America's Heartland?

52 points by aaronbrethorst 10y ago

enraged_camel 10y ago
I think the top commenter ("cobo") nailed it. The main problem is that a lot of people see their job as their identity. When someone suggests they adapt themselves to another, more modern industry, they see that as an attack on their identity and way of life and dig in. The result is almost always a political mess, as those running for office come up with protectionist, regressive policies to appease those people to be able to get or retain their votes.
- pacaro 10y ago
  I remember my first exposure to this as a child in the early 80s, a friend of my parents was long term unemployed and I couldn't understand it. My mother's (somewhat unsympathetic tbh) explanation was that he wanted his old job back and that it no longer existed. He did eventually find gainful employment, but in another field. A little off topic, but a functioning welfare system has the potential to allow people to take the time to find the right job, rather than be pressured into taking the first thing that comes along. It's a question of balance
  - Clubber 10y ago
    >A little off topic, but a functioning welfare system has the potential to allow people to take the time to find the right job, rather than be pressured into taking the first thing that comes along. It's a question of balance So does having 6 months of income saved up, but we don't teach any type of finance in high schools. I understand that some people with jobs don't have that ability, but the vast majority do.
- massysett 10y ago
  People tend to be much too glib about this. Megan Mcardle nailed this: "Moreover, people invest a lot in building up a professional identity, which helps make the work more bearable (and, by giving people pride in what they do, probably ensures that the work is better done). Suddenly abandoning something that has constituted a major part of who you are, and taking a job at the bottom of a new field, is not any easier for a machinist or a coal miner than it would be for a professional." https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-01-06/some-blue-collar-workers-probably-shouldn-t-do-pink-jobs https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-01-06/some-blue...
  - jacquesm 10y ago
    > Suddenly abandoning something that has constituted a major part of who you are, and taking a job at the bottom of a new field, is not any easier for a machinist or a coal miner than it would be for a professional. As if blue collar workers are not professionals.
    - nicwolff 10y ago
      By the usual definition, they're not – the noun "professional" means a white-collar worker.
      - jacquesm 10y ago
        Well, color me surprised, I always figured the usual definition of 'professional' means he or she who is schooled in their art and using that knowledge professionally, not 'those who don't get their hands dirty'. I find it hard to see a machinist not as a professional but fine, I'll change my internal dictionary. Reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional it looks as if this is a cultural difference. Edit: thinking about this a bit longer, it seems clear that the distinction was made by those who don't get their hands dirty at the expense of those who do, and it seems extremely demeaning to me. As if the 'white/blue collar worker' distinction wasn't bad enough now people who spend a lifetime acquiring the knowledge to do their jobs are not even allowed to be called - or call themselves - professionals.
        grzm 10y ago
        And then there's the sense of professional versus amateur. I suspect your internal dictionary is just fine, and we're running into different senses of the use of professional. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/professional https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/professional
        losteric 10y ago
        Doctors are professionals, miners are tradesmen, artists are craftsmen. They're just legacy words. If there is any cultural respect or stigma, it's mostly tied to income not the work itself.
- JustSomeNobody 10y ago
  Interesting. In the tech sector we are always being bombarded with needing to be hooked in socially, have a github presence, etc. So, I guess we are not immune to that either. In order to get a good job, our career cannot be separate from our identity. We have to eat, drink and pee technology.
tabeth 10y ago
If people weren't so obsessed with their jobs it wouldn't matter where you worked. Unfortunately, we are. Case and point -- North Carolina and their need for farmers [1] [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/05/15/north-carolina-needed-6500-farm-workers-only-7-americans-stuck-it-out/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/05/15/north...
- TheAdamAndChe 10y ago
  That's a pretty poor example. The laborers were paid $9.70/hr. No American would want to do that when you can make more working at a gas station. That seems to be the biggest problem with lower class work in the US at the moment. Cost of living is always going up, but the companies want to pay the same paltry wages they were a few decades ago.
  - tabeth 10y ago
    I don't understand. $9.70 is better than being unemployed. Your comment perfectly illustrates the point I'm trying to make (people care too much about what they're doing and/or where they're doing it -- this naturally leads to your identity being tired to your job). If it's not I'd love to hear the reasoning.
    - salesguy222 10y ago
      Jobs involve physical risks and opportunity costs. There are plenty of truly poor people out there who I really do think would rather be homeless than toil dangerously. 9.70 doesn't pay for a broken arm or back pain years down the line
      - tabeth 10y ago
        Not every job that pays $9.70 is necessarily dangerous, so I fail to see your point. That article is more of a representation of a greater potential issue.
        10y ago
olliej 10y ago
No, because they keep wanting to dig coal out of the ground? :-/
arca_vorago 10y ago
No, simply because it doesn't offer enough jobs to make a macro impact, and many of the issues tied to the destruction of the middle class are much larger than just job availability. You know what could do it though? A new new deal focused not just on national roads and bridges, but public owned internet.
- zeroer 10y ago
  > many of the issues tied to the destruction of the middle class are much larger than just job availability. Isn't job availability the biggest issue when it comes to destruction of the middle class? Could you name a bigger issue?
  - mistermann 10y ago
    In Canada anyways, a combination of 10+ years of zero interest rates, culture, and who knows what else has resulted in a housing bubble such that even if you have a fantastic job, in many cities you're not going to be able to buy a house, ever. And now, because any policy change (normalizing interest rates for example) that might affect these precious lottery winners is a non-starter. Meanwhile, this bubble is well underway bleeding into the rental market. So it is literally government policy to create a society of have and have nots.
    - TheAdamAndChe 10y ago
      I think the insanely high housing prices are also largely due to the centralization of most new jobs centering around urban areas. People go where the jobs are, which drives up demand for urban housing. That's how it is in much of the US, at least. I'm not sure if Canada is different.
  - arca_vorago 10y ago
    Primarily it is one thing, a lack of economic mobility. Things that factor into that are stagnation of wages, increasing wealth inequality, and the fact that policy has been shown to favor the wealthy. The other commenter also touches on key points, rising rent cost as a % of wage, lack of ownership compared to past generations, lack of interest bearing accounts, etc. Trick up is real, trickle down is the myth.
philipkglass 10y ago
A coal plant requires a lot of workers to keep running. It requires even more workers to keep it supplied with coal. Per megawatt hour, electricity from coal is more labor-intense than from natural gas, wind, or a utility scale solar PV installation. A wind farm does not require many full time workers for operation and maintenance. Most present wind industry jobs are in installation and manufacturing. When wind power stops growing and reaches steady-state, employing people for O&M plus manufacturing/installing replacements for aged-out components, the job count is going to plunge. I don't actually think that wind's low labor intensity is bad. I think it's great that renewables can produce electricity with far less pollution and significantly less human labor than coal plants. But it does mean that switching energy jobs away from coal, even if it were frictionless, still leaves you with fewer jobs than the status quo ante. It's somewhat like trying to switch everyone unemployed by robots into new robot-maintenance-technician careers. The numbers don't work.
- bnolsen 10y ago
  They just need people around to pick up all the dead birds...
  - crdoconnor 10y ago
    Roughly 3 billion birds are killed by housecats each year while 200,000 are killed by wind turbines. Curiously, when coal/nuclear/gas industry lobbyists (also Trump) emphasize the latter fact they usually fail to point out the former.
    - artacus 10y ago
      House cats don't kill Golden Eagles.
      - hyperbovine 10y ago
        Quite the opposite actually.
cavisne 10y ago
"federal tax credit—which gives producers 2.3 cents per kilowatt-hour of electricity for 10 years—is set to expire at the end of 2019" Roughly a 50% tax credit? Once this goes the pretty graph in this article will drop like a rock. Wind power is not suitable for base load power, not just because of its intermittency but also because the tech running it is designed to exploit government subsidies rather than provide reliable power. A great example of this immaturity here (software defaulted to protecting the wind farm at the expense of an entire state's power supply). https://www.aemo.com.au/-/media/Files/Electricity/NEM/Market_Notices_and_Events/Power_System_Incident_Reports/2017/Integrated-Final-Report-SA-Black-System-28-September-2016.pdf https://www.aemo.com.au/-/media/Files/Electricity/NEM/Market... Relying on wind power is like using your home router in an ISP datacenter.
- MR4D 10y ago
  You make a good comment (which I generally agree with), and prompted a thought: How much would it take to change this situation? For instance, the tax credit is a huge subsidy, and obviously reduces the effective capital cost. But once the capital cost is depreciated after a short period of years, then what does the ongoing marginal cost look like? If it's low, which I expect it is, then can it be retrofitted with batteries or other technology to store energy? I don't know the answer, but the lower effective capital cost has to have longer term effects - especially when a coal plant is depreciated over a couple decades.
- toomuchtodo 10y ago
  Without subsidies, utility solar and wind are already cheaper than coal. Rooftop solar is still behind, will catch up in 24-36 months. https://cleantechnica.com/2016/12/25/cost-of-solar-power-vs-cost-of-wind-power-coal-nuclear-natural-gas/ https://cleantechnica.com/2016/12/25/cost-of-solar-power-vs-... "The first point is the very basic fact that new wind power and/or solar power plants are typically cheaper than new coal, natural gas, or nuclear power plants — even without any governmental support for solar or wind. Not only are they typically cheaper — they’re much cheaper in many cases. Yes, these are levelized cost of energy (LCOE) estimates from Lazard based on various assumptions, and they are averages for the US as a whole rather than prices for specific locations within the US, but the lower estimated costs for these renewables are reflected in the real world as well, where solar & wind accounted for 69% of new capacity additions in 2015, 99% of new capacity additions in Q1 2016, a large portion of new capacity additions in Q2 2016, and probably ~⅔ of new capacity additions for 2016 as a whole." https://www.lazard.com/media/438038/levelized-cost-of-energy-v100.pdf https://www.lazard.com/media/438038/levelized-cost-of-energy... (warning: pdf) Even with a reduced capacity factor, if you can shift non-essential loads to when renewables are producing (my pool pump needs to run X hours a day, but I'm happy to wait until the cost of power is low to run it), that's essentially "storage" without needing to pay for storage.

I think the top commenter ("cobo") nailed it. The main problem is that a lot of people see their job as their identity. When someone suggests they adapt themselves to another, more modern industry, they see that as an attack on their identity and way of life and dig in. The result is almost always a political mess, as those running for office come up with protectionist, regressive policies to appease those people to be able to get or retain their votes.

pacaro 10y ago
I remember my first exposure to this as a child in the early 80s, a friend of my parents was long term unemployed and I couldn't understand it. My mother's (somewhat unsympathetic tbh) explanation was that he wanted his old job back and that it no longer existed. He did eventually find gainful employment, but in another field. A little off topic, but a functioning welfare system has the potential to allow people to take the time to find the right job, rather than be pressured into taking the first thing that comes along. It's a question of balance
- Clubber 10y ago
  >A little off topic, but a functioning welfare system has the potential to allow people to take the time to find the right job, rather than be pressured into taking the first thing that comes along. It's a question of balance So does having 6 months of income saved up, but we don't teach any type of finance in high schools. I understand that some people with jobs don't have that ability, but the vast majority do.
massysett 10y ago
People tend to be much too glib about this. Megan Mcardle nailed this: "Moreover, people invest a lot in building up a professional identity, which helps make the work more bearable (and, by giving people pride in what they do, probably ensures that the work is better done). Suddenly abandoning something that has constituted a major part of who you are, and taking a job at the bottom of a new field, is not any easier for a machinist or a coal miner than it would be for a professional." https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-01-06/some-blue-collar-workers-probably-shouldn-t-do-pink-jobs https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-01-06/some-blue...
- jacquesm 10y ago
  > Suddenly abandoning something that has constituted a major part of who you are, and taking a job at the bottom of a new field, is not any easier for a machinist or a coal miner than it would be for a professional. As if blue collar workers are not professionals.
  - nicwolff 10y ago
    By the usual definition, they're not – the noun "professional" means a white-collar worker.
    - jacquesm 10y ago
      Well, color me surprised, I always figured the usual definition of 'professional' means he or she who is schooled in their art and using that knowledge professionally, not 'those who don't get their hands dirty'. I find it hard to see a machinist not as a professional but fine, I'll change my internal dictionary. Reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional it looks as if this is a cultural difference. Edit: thinking about this a bit longer, it seems clear that the distinction was made by those who don't get their hands dirty at the expense of those who do, and it seems extremely demeaning to me. As if the 'white/blue collar worker' distinction wasn't bad enough now people who spend a lifetime acquiring the knowledge to do their jobs are not even allowed to be called - or call themselves - professionals.
      - grzm 10y ago
        And then there's the sense of professional versus amateur. I suspect your internal dictionary is just fine, and we're running into different senses of the use of professional. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/professional https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/professional
      - losteric 10y ago
        Doctors are professionals, miners are tradesmen, artists are craftsmen. They're just legacy words. If there is any cultural respect or stigma, it's mostly tied to income not the work itself.
JustSomeNobody 10y ago
Interesting. In the tech sector we are always being bombarded with needing to be hooked in socially, have a github presence, etc. So, I guess we are not immune to that either. In order to get a good job, our career cannot be separate from our identity. We have to eat, drink and pee technology.

tabeth 10y ago

If people weren't so obsessed with their jobs it wouldn't matter where you worked. Unfortunately, we are. Case and point -- North Carolina and their need for farmers [1] [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/05/15/north-carolina-needed-6500-farm-workers-only-7-americans-stuck-it-out/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/05/15/north...

TheAdamAndChe 10y ago
That's a pretty poor example. The laborers were paid $9.70/hr. No American would want to do that when you can make more working at a gas station. That seems to be the biggest problem with lower class work in the US at the moment. Cost of living is always going up, but the companies want to pay the same paltry wages they were a few decades ago.
- tabeth 10y ago
  I don't understand. $9.70 is better than being unemployed. Your comment perfectly illustrates the point I'm trying to make (people care too much about what they're doing and/or where they're doing it -- this naturally leads to your identity being tired to your job). If it's not I'd love to hear the reasoning.
  - salesguy222 10y ago
    Jobs involve physical risks and opportunity costs. There are plenty of truly poor people out there who I really do think would rather be homeless than toil dangerously. 9.70 doesn't pay for a broken arm or back pain years down the line
    - tabeth 10y ago
      Not every job that pays $9.70 is necessarily dangerous, so I fail to see your point. That article is more of a representation of a greater potential issue.
      - 10y ago

olliej 10y ago

No, because they keep wanting to dig coal out of the ground? :-/

arca_vorago 10y ago

No, simply because it doesn't offer enough jobs to make a macro impact, and many of the issues tied to the destruction of the middle class are much larger than just job availability. You know what could do it though? A new new deal focused not just on national roads and bridges, but public owned internet.

zeroer 10y ago
> many of the issues tied to the destruction of the middle class are much larger than just job availability. Isn't job availability the biggest issue when it comes to destruction of the middle class? Could you name a bigger issue?
- mistermann 10y ago
  In Canada anyways, a combination of 10+ years of zero interest rates, culture, and who knows what else has resulted in a housing bubble such that even if you have a fantastic job, in many cities you're not going to be able to buy a house, ever. And now, because any policy change (normalizing interest rates for example) that might affect these precious lottery winners is a non-starter. Meanwhile, this bubble is well underway bleeding into the rental market. So it is literally government policy to create a society of have and have nots.
  - TheAdamAndChe 10y ago
    I think the insanely high housing prices are also largely due to the centralization of most new jobs centering around urban areas. People go where the jobs are, which drives up demand for urban housing. That's how it is in much of the US, at least. I'm not sure if Canada is different.
- arca_vorago 10y ago
  Primarily it is one thing, a lack of economic mobility. Things that factor into that are stagnation of wages, increasing wealth inequality, and the fact that policy has been shown to favor the wealthy. The other commenter also touches on key points, rising rent cost as a % of wage, lack of ownership compared to past generations, lack of interest bearing accounts, etc. Trick up is real, trickle down is the myth.

philipkglass 10y ago

A coal plant requires a lot of workers to keep running. It requires even more workers to keep it supplied with coal. Per megawatt hour, electricity from coal is more labor-intense than from natural gas, wind, or a utility scale solar PV installation. A wind farm does not require many full time workers for operation and maintenance. Most present wind industry jobs are in installation and manufacturing. When wind power stops growing and reaches steady-state, employing people for O&M plus manufacturing/installing replacements for aged-out components, the job count is going to plunge. I don't actually think that wind's low labor intensity is bad. I think it's great that renewables can produce electricity with far less pollution and significantly less human labor than coal plants. But it does mean that switching energy jobs away from coal, even if it were frictionless, still leaves you with fewer jobs than the status quo ante. It's somewhat like trying to switch everyone unemployed by robots into new robot-maintenance-technician careers. The numbers don't work.

bnolsen 10y ago
They just need people around to pick up all the dead birds...
- crdoconnor 10y ago
  Roughly 3 billion birds are killed by housecats each year while 200,000 are killed by wind turbines. Curiously, when coal/nuclear/gas industry lobbyists (also Trump) emphasize the latter fact they usually fail to point out the former.
  - artacus 10y ago
    House cats don't kill Golden Eagles.
    - hyperbovine 10y ago
      Quite the opposite actually.

cavisne 10y ago

"federal tax credit—which gives producers 2.3 cents per kilowatt-hour of electricity for 10 years—is set to expire at the end of 2019" Roughly a 50% tax credit? Once this goes the pretty graph in this article will drop like a rock. Wind power is not suitable for base load power, not just because of its intermittency but also because the tech running it is designed to exploit government subsidies rather than provide reliable power. A great example of this immaturity here (software defaulted to protecting the wind farm at the expense of an entire state's power supply). https://www.aemo.com.au/-/media/Files/Electricity/NEM/Market_Notices_and_Events/Power_System_Incident_Reports/2017/Integrated-Final-Report-SA-Black-System-28-September-2016.pdf https://www.aemo.com.au/-/media/Files/Electricity/NEM/Market... Relying on wind power is like using your home router in an ISP datacenter.

MR4D 10y ago
You make a good comment (which I generally agree with), and prompted a thought: How much would it take to change this situation? For instance, the tax credit is a huge subsidy, and obviously reduces the effective capital cost. But once the capital cost is depreciated after a short period of years, then what does the ongoing marginal cost look like? If it's low, which I expect it is, then can it be retrofitted with batteries or other technology to store energy? I don't know the answer, but the lower effective capital cost has to have longer term effects - especially when a coal plant is depreciated over a couple decades.
toomuchtodo 10y ago
Without subsidies, utility solar and wind are already cheaper than coal. Rooftop solar is still behind, will catch up in 24-36 months. https://cleantechnica.com/2016/12/25/cost-of-solar-power-vs-cost-of-wind-power-coal-nuclear-natural-gas/ https://cleantechnica.com/2016/12/25/cost-of-solar-power-vs-... "The first point is the very basic fact that new wind power and/or solar power plants are typically cheaper than new coal, natural gas, or nuclear power plants — even without any governmental support for solar or wind. Not only are they typically cheaper — they’re much cheaper in many cases. Yes, these are levelized cost of energy (LCOE) estimates from Lazard based on various assumptions, and they are averages for the US as a whole rather than prices for specific locations within the US, but the lower estimated costs for these renewables are reflected in the real world as well, where solar & wind accounted for 69% of new capacity additions in 2015, 99% of new capacity additions in Q1 2016, a large portion of new capacity additions in Q2 2016, and probably ~⅔ of new capacity additions for 2016 as a whole." https://www.lazard.com/media/438038/levelized-cost-of-energy-v100.pdf https://www.lazard.com/media/438038/levelized-cost-of-energy... (warning: pdf) Even with a reduced capacity factor, if you can shift non-essential loads to when renewables are producing (my pool pump needs to run X hours a day, but I'm happy to wait until the cost of power is low to run it), that's essentially "storage" without needing to pay for storage.