The Renewable Energy Industry Is All About JOBS
This political campaign ad from the woman running against Mitch McConnell for a U.S. Senate seat in Kentucky reminds me of an important issue—perhaps the only important issue—driving the ultimate success of the renewable energy industry in this country: the promise of jobs.
The ad depicts an out-of-work coal miner from Eastern Kentucky, providing Ms. Grimes the opportunity to promise how she’ll put this fellow and thousands like him back to work. Never mind that he works in what is arguably the world’s deadliest (legal) profession; the quality of the work isn’t really the point here, rather, that the fossil fuel industry claims to be all about jobs.
They hope you won’t look into this too closely and come to understand that there are 6.5 million jobs supported by renewable energy worldwide. That’s not a promise, by the way; it’s 6.5 million weekly paychecks. They hope you don’t know that EnergyFactCheck.org hosts literally hundreds of articles that describe the huge profusion of jobs opening up every day in the U.S., as solar, wind and the rest continue to expand.
The fossil fuel boys are, of course, the wealthiest and most powerful industry in the history of humankind, and so it’s to be expected that they are going to continue to spend some of that lucre to convince you that oil, coal and gas are the only games in town. But ask yourself: why are we hearing about this so much all of a sudden?
My guess is that, for the first time, they’re threatened–and it’s serious. 10 years ago, the fossil industry wasn’t spending a nickel denigrating renewables; they didn’t need to, as we were barely a rounding error. Now, these folks are gazing in horror at some of the most critical facts—data points that become more alarming each week:
• Wind energy is close to five percent of the U.S. grid mix
• The cost of clean energy continues to plummet, and the efficiencies are rising
• Virtually every country other than the U.S. is taking seriously its responsibilities to migrate away from fossil fuels, based on concerns about climate change, ocean acidification, loss of biodiversity, lung disease, etc. How long can they continue to count on the ignorance of the American people?
The handwriting’s on the wall. So what to do?
Attack, of course.
But the renewable energy industry’s response isn’t a counter-attack per se; it’s not hysteria and lies; it’s facts and reason; it’s the truth about what is clearly destined to be the defining industry in the 21st Century, and thus the place where real job growth resides.
Let me ask you to do this: calmly navigate to the “forward” icon and send this post (or the link to EnergyFactCheck.org) to someone who, for whatever reason, doesn’t seem to get this. It will make you feel good. And that’s a promise – from me.
We each understand that fossil fuels industry will slowly die. I think that renewable energy will become our primary source. Both should fight for existence.
Outstanding analysis! Great article! Right on target!
I am of the opinion that renewable energy sources advancement for implementation AND JOBS (for trained personnel) are the most important and cannot be disassociated. The European Union has the right ideas and the EU is applying those ideas to make renewable enrgy sources a reality – why can’t the U.S.A. follow – simply by looking outside the borders and observe!
While renewable energy is the ultimate goal and job creation is an important lubricant to sell the idea to the public… we must not get the cart before the horse.
European efforts, specifically Germany has plowed straight ahead by shutting down their nuclear program and turning smoke stacks into rubble but….. they have brownouts with their flakey renewables that were supposed to replace the base load that was removed from service.
Until the storage problem is solved, renewables are stuck at about 20% of system capacity. Beyond that is fool hardy IMO. Put the federal subsidies into solving the storage problem and let the market determine the rate of expansion of the pipe dreams that go off line at inconvenient times.
Most people do not know who Elon Musk is or the jobs that are created by the construction of Supercharging Stations for free energy for the Tesla Model S in the US, Europe and China. Renewable energy is intended to be the source of electricity at these sites and will also provide excess energy to be fed to the grid for other electric appliances or other uses. In years to come the increasing number of electric vehicles, by all manufacturers, will reduce the world’s need for fossil fuel and the air pollution caused by its use. In 2008 the Tesla Roadster showed that electric cars could have an impact on the environment. It will be interesting to see what the next 6 years will bring. Renewable energy from wind power has passed that from nuclear power plants in China. Elon Musk also has interest in SolarCity which provides renewable solar energy to homes and businesses.
How many good paying jobs would construction of 1,000 bioenergy plants create?
AAEC has developed a new concept low-carbon energy technology we’ve designed for job creation and for serving as the core technology for cleaner renewable energy production systems and energy efficiency improvements across the North American landscape and around the world.
AAEC’s novel new concept technology consists of a biomass and/or waste combustion gasification or pyrolysis conversion technology that can provide scalable heat and power requirements as well as biofuel production for stand-alone use or to back up other alternative energy systems that depend on solar, wind or other intermittent sources of energy, and in this way help double the deployment of alternative energy projects around the world in the near future.
Think; there are around 3,000 counties in the US that could install county scale bio-refineries to convert locally available wastes and biomass into heat, power and drop in biofuels.
At AAEC we believe humanity needs to urgently repower all human activities with cleaner energy on a much wider scale, and that innovation is our key to a better future and we aspire to offer home and business owners, towns, cities, counties and utilities our new concept low-budget, low-carbon pathway to greater energy efficiency, energy security, cleaner energy and economic development. We believe now that President Obama is moving the climate issue to the front burner will be a boost to what I’m offering an increasingly stressed planet.
AAEC’s product lines can be manufactured in the US and in most any locality on any continent for the local and regional market. This AAEC believes could create licensing opportunities and more jobs and these are among the things we propose offering to an alternative energy hungry world.
For further details please contact:
Les Blevins, President
Advanced Alternative Energy
1207 N 1800 Rd., Lawrence, KS 66049
Phone 785-842-1943 Fax 785-842-0909
Email LBlevins@aaecorp.com
For more info see
http://aaecorp.com
http://aaecorp.com/ceo.html
http://www.linkedin.com/profile/edit?trk=hb_tab_pro_top
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Advanced-Alternative-Energy/277213435730720
At the risk of being labeled a conspiracy theorist, allow me to point out (as was firmly recognized by Teddy Roosevelt, and a great many other powerful folks across the history of our species) that “capital organizes.”
The wealthy interests at the “top” of our society – and who exert massive and undue influence in all areas of human endeavor – have not yet decided it is to their private advantage to shift from filthy ancient sunlight to the clean modern stuff. The immensely profitable fossil energy industry is subsidized – according to a recent presidential speech – to the tune of $4 billion annually… that’s pretty rich music.
However beneficial renewables will be to our United States and health and well-being for ourselves and our progeny, there is a substantial transition cost for all those firms that continue to regard these resources as competition. Their formidable lobbying power ensures that the feeble attempts to subsidize renewables will continue to be sporadic, unpredictable and anemic. We may also expect the campaign of misinformation, concealment, and discredit to endure long past the tipping point.
To give you an idea of scale in terms of raw bribery and political threat potential, in 2012, all the elections for president, house and senate cost about $6.2 billion, and ExxonMobil, by itself, profited $44.8 billion that year alone. That means ExxonMobil, all by itself, could have bought all the federal elections in the country with just 14% of its 2012 PROFITS!
Exxon-Mobil and its ilk are quite well organized, and not for altruistic public benefit. If we logical, critically thinking and imaginative humans want to see our national security and political sovereignty preserved, and if we want to defend ourselves and our posterity against the lethal ravages that fossil fuels inflict upon the biosphere and the economy, we had best get organized.
Nuke tech is not an option. All currently operating and genuinely planned commercial nuclear fission energy technology is prohibitively expensive when all the costs are accounted for – mining, refining, construction, insuring, waste containment, facility lifespan, decommissioning – and, given natural disasters, human error and sabotage/terrorism potential, it’s clearly proven to be inherently dangerous to the biosphere just to operate.
Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) is safe, clean, proven technology, and modern energy storage systems make it viable. It’s already on the grid in California, Arizona, Spain and the United Arab Emirates, and many other places around the globe. The vast majority of the material needed is concrete, steel and glass. The present barriers against this elegant solution are neither technical nor resource-based, nor even financial – they’re purely political barriers that are erected and reinforced by bribery, and by those intractable fossil interests that do the bribing.
Harvesting modern sunshine is much cleaner and safer (and cheaper in the long run) than sucking and digging up filthy prehistoric sunshine from under hostile feet (or trading the permanent poisoning of massive volumes of potable water for a temporary domestic “boom”), dragging it dangerously all over the planet, burning it up, and pouring gigatons of the resulting prehistoric carbon into our modern sky year on year. Only bribery and the concealment of gargantuan externalized costs keep that toxic filth marketable.