Opinion: The movement to renewable energy is irreversible
If you took all the coal miners in the United States and sat them in Beaver Stadium the place would be under half full.
There were about 53,000 people working in the coal business in the U.S. in August 2019. That includes not just miners but office workers, maintenance and other coal support personnel, according to a report by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
By contrast, there were 242,300 Americans working in solar energy alone in 2018, says the Solar Foundation.
Far from being a job-killer, as it is often described by fossil-fuel industry advocates, the renewable energy economy is and will continue to be a job creator.
Pennsylvania’s Solar Future Plan says that if 10 percent of the Commonwealth’s energy output comes from solar by 2030, it will mean between 60,000 and 100,000 new jobs here. “From installers to system designers, these solar jobs have median wages of $20-$38 per hour and will be available in rural, urban and suburban areas,” reads a report from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.
We have a ways to go to make that happen, of course. Just 4% of net electricity generation in Pennsylvania comes from renewable energy sources now and only a fraction of that is from solar.
It’s clear to many, however, that the path to job growth lies not in doubling down on fossil fuels but in transitioning to the renewable energy economy. That transition is coming. Everyone, include oil, gas and coal companies, knows it. The only question is: how soon
Sooner rather than later, I hope. Coal is dirty and dangerous. Research by a Michigan Tech professor published in the journal Social Science in February 2019 indicated that 52,015 premature deaths of Americans each year can be attributed to pollution and mercury heaved into the atmosphere by coal. That’s about one death for every job the coal industry creates.
Coal jobs are not coming back and government over-regulation is not to blame. Mechanization is. In 1980, it took 52 miners to produce a ton of coal. By 2015 it took only 16.
By 2016 there were already more than 3 million U.S. jobs in non-fossil energy and energy efficiency compared to 1 million in fossil energy, according to a 2017 report by the U.S. Department of Energy.
Some years ago Citizens’ Climate Lobby commissioned a study that found the transition from fossil fuels to a renewable energy economy would net a gain of 2.1 million jobs nationally.
From oil to anthracite coal to natural gas production, Pennsylvania has a long and storied history in the fossil fuel industry. But it’s time to face facts.
Today, the energy technologies of the future create more jobs per energy dollar spent than those of the past. This will accelerate as the new technologies mature. Wind power, for example, is already cost-competitive with electricity from fossil fuel and creates 50 percent more jobs for the same amount of energy, according to a study in the journal Energy Policy.
The change to renewable energy sources is inevitable and irreversible. The only question is whether it will happen soon enough to save us from the worst effects of climate change. That is why speeding up the process by putting a price on carbon is so important.