Is solar and wind a renewables strategy or a jobs program?

Those that read my posts know I don’t believe solar is the long-term answer to clean energy. Wind is slightly better, but the inability to generate continuous power remains problematic. The fix is to install massive battery storage projects. Yes – those batteries that have a bit of a fire safety issue, and which there exists no solid recycling plan. But I digress.

The topic du jour is jobs – specifically wind and solar jobs. Canary Media recently summarized wind and solar jobs by state. But before getting to the “punch line” of this post, let me share some of the most interesting data.

California is the 800-pound gorilla of solar jobs, accounting for just over a third of all solar employment which nationally totals 344,557. With 26,135 wind-related jobs, Texas leads the nation in that category.

For both wind and solar, the top 10 states account for almost two-thirds of total jobs. Five states are in the top 10 in both – California, Texas, New York, Florida, and Colorado. And California and Texas combined account for just over 35% of all wind and solar jobs. These data points Indicate the high level of concentration of the renewable energy effort.

But here’s where it gets really interesting. According to the Department of Energy, clean energy technologies including wind and solar – accounted for nearly 87% of net new electric power generation jobs last year. A total of 22,279 were added in 2022 with solar contributing 12,256 and wind 5,416.

Wind employs twice as many people as coal power generation. However, coal still produces 19.5% of our electricity while wind only accounts for 10.2%.

In 2022 natural gas accounts for just shy of 40% of the country’s electricity while employing slightly over 118,000 people. Compare that to solar’s 344,000+ jobs which produces a mere 3.4% of our electricity total.

Granted, the comparison isn’t completely fair given many of the wind and solar jobs are construction related and we are not building many new gas plants and no new coal plants Then again, natural gas includes exploration and distribution jobs.  Nor am I advocating for the continued use of coal or natural gas, although given our current conundrum, natural gas is the best of a bad lot and is better than coal or oil.

The point is we are devoting a good deal of human capital to inefficiently generate relatively small amounts of electricity. As a means to combat climate change, both wind and solar have a place, but should they be the focus? As a jobs creation program, there appear to be doing a stellar job However, if the goal is to create a jobs program, you can’t beat them.