– One coal worker or 79 solar ones, same electricity:
The New York Times tells us that Today’s Energy Jobs Are in Solar, Not Coal. But watch the pea – these jobs are “energy jobs”, not jobs that use energy.
Apparently it takes 79 people to create the same energy through solar as one person does through coal. (And that would be cheaper, how? )
To start, despite a huge workforce of almost 400,000 solar workers (about 20 percent of electric power payrolls in 2016), that sector produced an insignificant share, less than 1 percent, of the electric power generated in the United States last year (EIA data here). And that’s a lot of solar workers: about the same as the combined number of employees working at Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Apple, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, Pfizer, Ford Motor Company and Procter & Gamble.
In contrast, it took about the same number of natural gas workers (398,235) last year to produce more than one-third of U.S. electric power, or 37 times more electricity than solar’s minuscule share of 0.90 percent.
…to produce the same amount of electric power as just one coal worker would require two natural gas workers and an amazingly-high 79 solar workers.
Cheap energy creates job opportunities in other sectors. Solar energy takes people out of the productive workforce.
H/t reader kevin a.
* * *
PayPal: Donate in USD
PayPal: Donate in EUR
PayPal: Donate in GBP