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Posts Tagged ‘solar jobs’

Solar Jobs in Texas Booming, but Where’s the Love?

Posted in green jobs, renewable portfolio standard, tagged , on February 22, 2015 |

Solar Worker (small) - photo from Solar Foundation

Solar Foundation, National Solar Jobs Census 2014

Solar industry jobs are expanding rapidly in Texas, despite a lack of supportive statewide policies. The Solar Foundation’s recently released Texas Solar Jobs Census 2014 shows that, solar jobs grew by more than 68% in Texas last year with over 2,800 new jobs created. That’s 3 times faster than solar job growth nationally, which is still impressive at almost 22% from 2013 to 2014. In contrast, overall job growth in the Texas economy was 2.8% from 2013 to 2014 – solar jobs grew 24 times faster.

Nearly 7,000 Texans are now employed in the solar industry, putting the state in 6th place nationally for total solar jobs. Solar job creation is benefiting people of all different backgrounds, in a wide range of professions, including solar panel installation, electrical, roofing, managing, sales, project development, solar factory workers, finance, investment, insurance, consulting, human resources, administrative, engineers, research, marketing, media relations and communication.

Workers earn an average of $20-24/hr in the fast growing solar installation sector. Solar designers and sales people and other professionals earn more.. Although women and African Americans are still under represented in solar jobs, hiring has increased among Latinos, Asians, African Americans, women and veterans. Solar jobs are generally skilled jobs that pay living wages.

The solar industry will play a big role in growing and strengthening our economy in the years ahead. Arno Harris, CEO of Recurrent Energy:

Texas’s abundant land, ample sunshine, and extensive transmission network make the state one of the top solar industry growth markets in the U.S. In addition, years of decreasing costs and growing scale are now enabling solar power to successfully compete against conventional energy to meet the growing demand in ERCOT.

Despite the rapid increase in solar jobs, solar isn’t getting a lot of love in the Texas Legislature. Representative Stanford actually filed a bill that would entirely do away with Texas’ renewable portfolio standard. At a time when Texas oil and gas companies are laying off workers, shouldn’t state officials be commending industries that are adding good jobs at such a rapid rate, not trying to slow their progress?

There are a couple rays of sunshine in the Texas House. Representative Farrar (D- Harris) has filed one solar-friendly bill – HB 706 – which would change the exemption application by a property owner of solar or wind powered energy to a one time application. Current law requires an annual application for an exemption, even though the exemption can be taken for the lifetime of the solar installation. HB 706 would reduce paperwork and administrative expenses.

Representative Dawnna Dukes (D-Austin) is working with consumer advocates, developers, property owner associations, and the solar industry to develop legislation that will more fully protect property owners’ rights to install solar on their properties. Currently, builders can prohibit homeowners from installing solar for years while the rest of a development is built and sold. After that, property owner associations aren’t supposed to deny solar installations, but the law contains a loophole that some property owner associations exploit.

Texas lawmakers should focus on finding ways to building on the existing momentum in the solar industry by solar options for individuals and businesses and not placing any extra barriers for utility scale solar to participate in the market.

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Smart Solar Subsidies Result in Huge Solar Jobs Growth

Posted in Energy, green jobs, Jobs, Renewables, solar, tagged , , , , , , on May 27, 2014 |

Solar Jobs StatsA recent report by the Solar Foundation shows that employment in the solar industry is booming. Over the past four years, employment in the nation’s solar companies has grown by about 53%. The number of solar jobs grew by an astonishing 20% between 2012 and 2013 alone. By contrast, the overall economy created only 1.9% more jobs over the same period of time. Texas has 4,100 employees in the solar industry, and experienced a 28% growth in solar jobs from 2012 to 2013. Texas is in 6th place for total number of solar employees.

Of the jobs created in the solar industry, sales and installations are leading the way. Within the next year, jobs installing panels are expected to grow by 21.4%, while sales jobs are expected to grow by 14.1%. However, jobs in the solar manufacturing sector are projected to grow only by 8.6%, as U.S manufacturers struggle to compete with cheap panels from China and other developing markets. In response the U.S has imposed a 31% tariff on imported Chinese solar panels. Still, even the slowest growing sector in the solar industry is creating jobs four times faster than the overall economy. The solar industry is truly one of the great success stories of the economic recovery.

Solar panel installationIt’s important to note that one thing driving panel prices down so rapidly, and creating a ton of jobs in the process, is the increased demand being created from the solar subsidies at the various levels of government. If these subsidies are ended prematurely, solar panels would be out of reach for many consumers, resulting in a reduction in demand. If this happens, the reduced demand could slow jobs growth.

In order to keep the solar industry going strong and creating jobs, clear guidance on the federal level surrounding renewable energy subsidies is needed. For example, the solar investment tax credit, which has helped spark the economic boom in solar, is set to expire at the end of 2016. This tax credit has played a key role in fostering the 1,600% increase in solar installations since 2006. In fact subsidized solar power has already reached grid parity in some states. That means that on a kilowatt-hour (kwh) basis, solar can be as cheap as or cheaper than coal, natural gas, or any other conventional form of energy. In states or cities where solar reaches grid parity, observers are expecting an even further surge in solar energy, yielding even more jobs growth. But if the solar investment tax credit completely expires for residential customers and is reduced to 10% for commercial customers, as scheduled, in 2016, jobs growth in the solar industry could slow unless soft cost are reduced . Any reduction in subsides should be offset with a reduction in the required permitting and paper work for solar installation. These soft costs related to regulatory compliance cause solar installation to cost nearly twice as much as they do in other countries. In Germany, where the solar instillation process is stream lined, a 4kw system costs only $10,000 to install, where the same system costs nearly $20,000 in the United States.

As of right now, solar appears to be entering a period of nearly exponential growth thanks to falling panel prices, and effective subsidies at the various levels of government. While every industry should aspire to be able to stand on its own two feet, ending the subsidies for solar in 2016 would be premature and would put the industry at a disadvantage among the many energy industries, including coal, natural gas and nuclear, that receive other subsidies. Any reduction in subsidies should be offset by making the regulatory process simpler, and cheaper. The solar industry is one of the fastest growing industries around, and until solar can consistently reach grid parity, subsidies should kept in place to ensure strong jobs growth, and a bright future for the green U.S economy.

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I Bet You Actually Care About Austin Energy’s Generation Plan

Posted in Air Quality, Austin Energy, Climate Change, Coal, Coal Plants, drought, Energy, Fracking, geothermal, Global Warming, green jobs, Health, Jobs, natural gas, Renewables, solar, Water, wind, tagged , , , , on February 25, 2014 |

Updating the the Austin Energy Resource, Generation and Climate Protection Plan to 2020 to become the Austin Energy Resource, Generation and Climate Protection Plan to 2024 probably doesn’t sound super exciting, but there’s almost certainly some aspect of the choices that will soon be made on your behalf that you care about.

IMG_48691. Climate Change: I’m not going to try to convince anyone reading this that our planet’s climate is changing and that humans are largely responsible for that change.  Nor am I going to try to convince you that those changes are going to be largely detrimental to human prosperity.  But if you already recognize those two basic truths, then you will definitely want to listen up.  Austin Energy is proposing to not only run Austin’s portion of the Fayette coal plant until 2025, but also to dramatically increase its use of natural gas by adding a new 800 megawatt gas plant to its energy portfolio.  That’s bigger than Austin’s portion of Fayette.  And although natural gas emits less carbon dioxide per kilowatt hour of energy production than burning coal, once the substantial impact of the roughly 3% of gas that leaks into the atmosphere during extraction, processing and transportation is accounted for, natural gas is almost as harmful to the climate as coal.  That’s because the primary component of natural gas, methane, is 87 times more powerful of a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide over 20 years.  Although many people focus on the 100 year time frame when talking about climate change, we can’t afford to ignore our more immediate future.  Central Texas has already experienced its share of climate impacts over the past few years in the form of drought, wildfires and floods.  We must stop those impacts from worsening at a greater rate than they already will be.  Natural gas isn’t going to save us.  Even without the massive problem of leaking methane, burning gas instead of coal only decreases our climate impact by about half, so it’s not a long term solution anyway – the best it could have been was a stopgap.  Instead of investing in infrastructure that won’t get us where we need to be, we can make better decisions now.

Attend one of Austin Energy’s stakeholder meetings this week and ask the staff to consider the full climate impacts of energy sources.

2. Jobs: Developing renewable energy sources creates 3 times as many jobs as developing fossil fuel energy sources per dollar invested.  Whereas a large chunk of the cost connected to a coal plan or a gas plant is for the coal and gas, the wind and sun are free.  So, instead of paying for the privilege of burning a limited resource, we can pay people to harness the energy from free and unlimited resources.

Across the U.S., solar energy jobs grew 20% from 2012 to 2013, compared to average job growth across all industries of 1.9%.  A large percentage of that growth was in Texas, but Texas still ranks 44th in solar jobs per capita.  Increasing Austin Energy’s solar goal will bring more jobs to Texas, but it’s increasing the local solar goal that will have the most impact on local job creation.  The Austin Local Solar Advisory Commission unanimously recommended that Austin Energy’s solar goal for 2020 be increased from 200 megawatts (MW) to 400 MW.  It also recommended that at least half of that solar development be local and at least half of that local solar be customer controlled (that’s what you see on residential and business rooftops and yards).  According to the LSAC’s calculations done using the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) Jobs and Economic Development Impact (JEDI) model, the $60 million it would take to develop that amount of local solar would bring the Austin area a net of $300 million in local economic benefits – wages, taxes, etc.  If Austin Energy adopts policies to give preference to local companies who hire local workers, our community can benefit even more.  On the other hand, we are currently sending $80 million to Montana each year for the coal we burn in the Fayette coal plant.

Tell Austin Energy that you support growing local jobs by increasing our solar goals, including the local and customer owned solar goals.

3. Water: If you live in central Texas, I don’t need to tell you that water is a huge issue – in fact it’s just a big issue for Texas that the Legislature, with voter approval appropriated $2 billion dollars to fund water projects, with 20% of those funds to be used on water conservation efforts.  We can’t make it rain more, so we are going to have to make some choices about what we want to use water for.  The Fayette coal plant, which Austin Energy owns one third of, needs about 5 billion gallons of water per year to operate.  And lest you start thinking natural gas plants are the answer, know that over 39 billion gallons of water was used in fracking jobs in Texas between January 2011 and May 2013.  Producers in the Eagle Ford Shale play are especially wasteful, using an average of 4.4 million gallons of water per well.  That’s water that can’t be used for domestic, commercial, industrial, agricultural, or ecosystem uses.

Tell Austin Energy to focus investment on drought proof energy sources like wind and solar.

4. Health: Air pollution from burning coal and extracting natural gas are taking a real toll on human health in Texas.  The Fayette coal plant is responsible for over $55.5 million in health impacts from air pollution.  Those impacts include asthma attacks, chronic bronchitis, heart attacks and the associated hospital visits and deaths.  Even so, Austin Energy has proposed running its portion of Fayette until 2025.

Lack of regulation over the natural gas industry, which has operations strewn across vast areas has resulted in a tragic disregard for human well being.  If you haven’t already, read this excellent piece of investigative journalism about how your fellow Texans are being assaulted with toxic chemicals in the Eagle Ford Shale area.  Instead of building a large new gas plant to drive up demand for dangerous fracking, Austin Energy should focus on growing its renewable energy portofolio with more wind and solar and perhaps some geothermal energy.

Air pollution is much more than an environmental issue – it’s a public health issue.  That’s why you find medical professionals and health advocates supporting a transition to clean energy.

Sign up for one of Austin Energy’s stakeholder meetings and ask them to give up their plans for a giant new gas plant and to examine more options for retiring the Fayette coal plant in an affordable way.

5. Affordable Energy: Wind and solar energy are competitive with coal and natural gas already.  Meanwhile, electricity from coal plants is going to get more expensive because of various regulations to limit pollution.  Natural gas prices are low now, but have fluctuated greatly over time, making a big bet on natural gas risky.  When natural gas prices go up, Austin Energy raises our fuel charge to recover those costs.  Since affordable wind and solar are available now and can assure us a predictable price for 10-20 years, why would we not make those energy sources our priority?  Austin Energy has done a great job getting good wind contracts to keep customer rates low and is set to achieve its 35% renewable energy goal 4 years early in 2016.

Tell Austin Energy to keep up its momentum by expanding the renewable energy goal to 50% for 2020 and 60% by 2024.

Take Action:

Austin Energy is holding 3 stakeholder meetings to gather public input on the Austin Energy Resource, Generation and Climate Protection Plan update to 2024.

  • Tuesday, February 25: 10 am – 12 pm (noon)
  • Tuesday, February 25: 6 pm – 8 pm
  • Thursday, February 27: 1 pm – 3 pm

This is your chance to help determine how the money you pay for your electric bills is invested by our publicly owned utility.

Please sign up to attend one of the meetings.

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