7 ms·

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

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

heydenberk 12y ago
It's natural for a mature industry (coal) to require less labor than an immature industry (solar) which is in a phase of rapid growth.
- adventured 12y ago
  I don't think that's inherently true at all, it depends on the nature of the industry or company and how they're structured. Most of the fastest growth tech companies required very little labor compared to their early extreme growth - most such companies only got bloated at the tail end of their growth, and their labor to sales ratios fell dramatically (eg Microsoft, Intel, Dell, Cisco, eBay, Google, etc). Amazon requires less jobs per dollar of revenue generated, than Walmart (~75% less) or Target (~66% less). Amazon will likely push this to an extreme over time as they heavily automate their warehouses with robotics, doing away with at least half of their theoretically expected human labor growth. Advertising and look-up systems online require vastly less jobs than old-fashioned white / yellow pages. e-brokers require a lot less human labor than the old brokers used to, where you needed a human to process every trade. Craigslist butchered the classifieds industry, drastically optimizing it. eBay was famous for generating massive sales per employee in the first X years of existence, far beyond anything established big auction houses managed. Microsoft practically invented the software company, and required a lot less labor per dollar of sales than just about any other company you could have compared it to at the time. They also had extreme growth. In 1980 they had the inflation adjusted equivalent of perhaps $40 million in sales with just 40 employees. This list keeps going.
cleverjake 12y ago
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 12y ago
  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.
  - dredmorbius 12y ago
    There's opportunity for solar in pretty much all states, and if not solar, then other forms of renewable energy, conservation measures, or activity. I would expect to see large concentrated solar installations in sunbelt states though.
  - toomuchtodo 12y ago
    > 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 12y ago
      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.
dredmorbius 12y ago
If anything, that would make the argument stronger that solar requires (or promotes) more jobs. The argument is that solar kills jobs. It doesn't. My concern is that the per-worker productivity is vastly lower than what we've been used to for fossil-fuel generation. Mind: I also think we can't get off of coal fast enough.
- fennecfoxen 12y ago
  The real mechanism whereby solar kills jobs is by making electricity more expensive, thus making manufacturing unprofitable (sending the jobs overseas) or making the costs of manufactured goods higher (so people who need them will take money from other parts of their budget, like entertainment expenses or savings.) It'd be a fine thing if solar really did mean fewer jobs overall: having fewer people spending time and effort making intermediate products is great for the economy.
  - crdoconnor 12y ago
    >The real mechanism whereby solar kills jobs is by making electricity more expensive Except it does the exact opposite. The spot price of electricity in Europe and Australia has even managed to turn negative a few times thanks mostly to solar. Did coal ever do that? The recent oil price plunge orchestrated by the Saudis was also in part recognition of this fact (as well as an attempt to punish US Shale oil producers/Iran). Competition never drove prices up but it sure does make the dinosaurs with disrupted business models whinge very loudly in the media and lobby furiously. P.S. Did you know that solar kills birds? Also there are unconfirmed reports that wind turbines cause health problems.
    - fleitz 12y ago
      It's a moot point because negative electricity prices reflect producing more than is necessary, the reason why it's negatively priced is because it's being generated at the wrong time (which is the stupidity of solar, it works best when there's less load) It's easy to make negative priced electricity with coal, simply shove a tonne of coal in the burner and then try to find someone to take the load before your generators / boilers blow up. I'm not saying coal is the future, merely that arguments about negatively priced electricity are stupid, which is why companies try to focus on baseload generation because that's where most of the generating capacity needs to be.
maerF0x0 12y ago
Keep in mind that solar, kind of like electric cars, has much of its costs front loaded. Roughly speaking, you spend $20k more on an electric car, and then save $15k on fuel because its cheaper to run off electricity than gasoline. But that $20K is today and the $15k savings is over 15 years. Similarly w/ solar panels. Return of investment is a few years. whereas marginal coal is probably very profitable, that is coal from an existing operating mine.
- IndianAstronaut 12y ago
  Very true. Getting solar panels for your home is like making a one time payment on a car and getting free gas for years.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
crdoconnor 12y ago
>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. Solar is very capital intensive - making the panels & deploying them - but operationally very, very cheap (all you have to do is give the panels a wipedown every so often). By the time solar is a large percentage of US energy it will probably still employ a similar number of workers. It's kind of like writing code in that respect.
vacri 12y ago
That's a subtle reframing you've done there. "Solar" is an entity unto itself, but "coal" is a submember of "fossil fuels". Apparently "solar" doesn't get the same consideration, despite being a member of the "renewable energy" industry. What about all the people working on coal plants and the related infrastructure? The article said "coal mining jobs", not "coal miners" specifically. Coal mining includes jobs like truck driving and the other items you're asking about. You've basically done a double-whammy reframing: solar jobs are "generic-anything in an entire industry"; coal jobs are only the literal miners themselves, in a 'narrowed-down' field from a wider industry.
gooseyard 12y ago
also, it is easy to forget that the steel industry is a major consumer of metallurgical coal (commonly called met coal), not as an energy source but as a raw material (coke). Producers of high quality, low sulphur coal might sell the same product to energy producers as "steam coal" or "thermal coal" as well as to steel producers. When prices for steam coal dip, it often stimulates steel production. I have experience in coal mining, but I don't know much about the coking process, other than that the coal is partially burned. Presumably as long as we're manufacturing virgin steel some of the coal carbon is released anyhow.
- dredmorbius 12y ago
  Coking coal can be replaced by other carbon sources, though coal itself was used to replace charcoal, derived from wood. The World Coal Association states "721 million tonnes of coking coal was used in the production of steel" in 2010. http://www.worldcoal.org/coal/uses-of-coal/coal-steel/ http://www.worldcoal.org/coal/uses-of-coal/coal-steel/ Total global coal extraction in 2010 was 3547.8 Mtoe, or ~5,068 tons of coal (BP 2014 annual energy review). Coking coal is 14% of that total.
mmphosis 12y ago
What about all the people working in oil & gas? There are actually fewer people with jobs in oil & gas compared to other industries. http://credbc.ca/role-energy-sector-bcs-economy/ http://credbc.ca/role-energy-sector-bcs-economy/
spacecowboy_lon 12y ago
and do you count the unskilled subcontractors from the building trades - when we had our roof instalation done recently a couple of guys came a few days before and put up the scafolding - are they part of the "solar industry"

heydenberk 12y ago

It's natural for a mature industry (coal) to require less labor than an immature industry (solar) which is in a phase of rapid growth.

adventured 12y ago
I don't think that's inherently true at all, it depends on the nature of the industry or company and how they're structured. Most of the fastest growth tech companies required very little labor compared to their early extreme growth - most such companies only got bloated at the tail end of their growth, and their labor to sales ratios fell dramatically (eg Microsoft, Intel, Dell, Cisco, eBay, Google, etc). Amazon requires less jobs per dollar of revenue generated, than Walmart (~75% less) or Target (~66% less). Amazon will likely push this to an extreme over time as they heavily automate their warehouses with robotics, doing away with at least half of their theoretically expected human labor growth. Advertising and look-up systems online require vastly less jobs than old-fashioned white / yellow pages. e-brokers require a lot less human labor than the old brokers used to, where you needed a human to process every trade. Craigslist butchered the classifieds industry, drastically optimizing it. eBay was famous for generating massive sales per employee in the first X years of existence, far beyond anything established big auction houses managed. Microsoft practically invented the software company, and required a lot less labor per dollar of sales than just about any other company you could have compared it to at the time. They also had extreme growth. In 1980 they had the inflation adjusted equivalent of perhaps $40 million in sales with just 40 employees. This list keeps going.

cleverjake 12y ago

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 12y ago
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.
- dredmorbius 12y ago
  There's opportunity for solar in pretty much all states, and if not solar, then other forms of renewable energy, conservation measures, or activity. I would expect to see large concentrated solar installations in sunbelt states though.
- toomuchtodo 12y ago
  > 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 12y ago
    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.

dredmorbius 12y ago

If anything, that would make the argument stronger that solar requires (or promotes) more jobs. The argument is that solar kills jobs. It doesn't. My concern is that the per-worker productivity is vastly lower than what we've been used to for fossil-fuel generation. Mind: I also think we can't get off of coal fast enough.

fennecfoxen 12y ago
The real mechanism whereby solar kills jobs is by making electricity more expensive, thus making manufacturing unprofitable (sending the jobs overseas) or making the costs of manufactured goods higher (so people who need them will take money from other parts of their budget, like entertainment expenses or savings.) It'd be a fine thing if solar really did mean fewer jobs overall: having fewer people spending time and effort making intermediate products is great for the economy.
- crdoconnor 12y ago
  >The real mechanism whereby solar kills jobs is by making electricity more expensive Except it does the exact opposite. The spot price of electricity in Europe and Australia has even managed to turn negative a few times thanks mostly to solar. Did coal ever do that? The recent oil price plunge orchestrated by the Saudis was also in part recognition of this fact (as well as an attempt to punish US Shale oil producers/Iran). Competition never drove prices up but it sure does make the dinosaurs with disrupted business models whinge very loudly in the media and lobby furiously. P.S. Did you know that solar kills birds? Also there are unconfirmed reports that wind turbines cause health problems.
  - fleitz 12y ago
    It's a moot point because negative electricity prices reflect producing more than is necessary, the reason why it's negatively priced is because it's being generated at the wrong time (which is the stupidity of solar, it works best when there's less load) It's easy to make negative priced electricity with coal, simply shove a tonne of coal in the burner and then try to find someone to take the load before your generators / boilers blow up. I'm not saying coal is the future, merely that arguments about negatively priced electricity are stupid, which is why companies try to focus on baseload generation because that's where most of the generating capacity needs to be.

maerF0x0 12y ago

Keep in mind that solar, kind of like electric cars, has much of its costs front loaded. Roughly speaking, you spend $20k more on an electric car, and then save $15k on fuel because its cheaper to run off electricity than gasoline. But that $20K is today and the $15k savings is over 15 years. Similarly w/ solar panels. Return of investment is a few years. whereas marginal coal is probably very profitable, that is coal from an existing operating mine.

IndianAstronaut 12y ago
Very true. Getting solar panels for your home is like making a one time payment on a car and getting free gas for years.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]

crdoconnor 12y ago

>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. Solar is very capital intensive - making the panels & deploying them - but operationally very, very cheap (all you have to do is give the panels a wipedown every so often). By the time solar is a large percentage of US energy it will probably still employ a similar number of workers. It's kind of like writing code in that respect.

vacri 12y ago

That's a subtle reframing you've done there. "Solar" is an entity unto itself, but "coal" is a submember of "fossil fuels". Apparently "solar" doesn't get the same consideration, despite being a member of the "renewable energy" industry. What about all the people working on coal plants and the related infrastructure? The article said "coal mining jobs", not "coal miners" specifically. Coal mining includes jobs like truck driving and the other items you're asking about. You've basically done a double-whammy reframing: solar jobs are "generic-anything in an entire industry"; coal jobs are only the literal miners themselves, in a 'narrowed-down' field from a wider industry.

gooseyard 12y ago

also, it is easy to forget that the steel industry is a major consumer of metallurgical coal (commonly called met coal), not as an energy source but as a raw material (coke). Producers of high quality, low sulphur coal might sell the same product to energy producers as "steam coal" or "thermal coal" as well as to steel producers. When prices for steam coal dip, it often stimulates steel production. I have experience in coal mining, but I don't know much about the coking process, other than that the coal is partially burned. Presumably as long as we're manufacturing virgin steel some of the coal carbon is released anyhow.

dredmorbius 12y ago
Coking coal can be replaced by other carbon sources, though coal itself was used to replace charcoal, derived from wood. The World Coal Association states "721 million tonnes of coking coal was used in the production of steel" in 2010. http://www.worldcoal.org/coal/uses-of-coal/coal-steel/ http://www.worldcoal.org/coal/uses-of-coal/coal-steel/ Total global coal extraction in 2010 was 3547.8 Mtoe, or ~5,068 tons of coal (BP 2014 annual energy review). Coking coal is 14% of that total.

mmphosis 12y ago

What about all the people working in oil & gas? There are actually fewer people with jobs in oil & gas compared to other industries. http://credbc.ca/role-energy-sector-bcs-economy/ http://credbc.ca/role-energy-sector-bcs-economy/

spacecowboy_lon 12y ago

and do you count the unskilled subcontractors from the building trades - when we had our roof instalation done recently a couple of guys came a few days before and put up the scafolding - are they part of the "solar industry"