WASHINGTON. The solar boom, happening in places like West Texas, has been heralded by politicians and industry as a way to replace dwindling fossil fuel jobs with a clean energy transition.
Only the acquisition of this job did not go as planned.
In 2021, the most recent year for which data is available, the solar industry employed 11 percent fewer people, or more than 40,000 people, than in the previous five years, according to the Department of Energy.
It also comes as solar installations are hitting record highs and developers are building the equivalent of nine rooftop and open-air nuclear power plants across the United States. According to the trade group Solar Energy Industries Association, annual solar installations increased nearly 60% between 2016 and 2021.
The downsizing and efficiency gains could have a significant impact on Houston, where fossil fuels have long fueled the local economy, and have raised questions about whether there will be enough clean energy jobs to replace the jobs lost to oil and coal. .
The solar layoffs are driven by a significant increase in the rate at which developers install solar systems, increased investment in large solar farms that can build the same number of megawatts with fewer workers, and advances in technology that allow solar panels to produce more products. electricity for the same physical area.
In California's San Joaquin Valley, one of the epicenters of America's solar boom, developers can now build solar farms many times larger than they did a decade ago with only a modest increase in the number of workers, said Ronnie Jangk, commercial director of the agency . . Fresno, California, headquarters of the International Brotherhood of Electricians.
“We started using solar energy for utilities 10 to 12 years ago. Twenty megawatts is a lot of work and will employ about 125 people,” he said. “They're doing 150 megawatts now, maybe 175 people. You'll definitely get leaner and more efficient.
The productivity gains come as President Joe Biden seeks to move the country's energy sector away from fossil fuels and replace jobs in coal and oil with equivalent jobs in the wind, solar and battery industries.
This is the start of a transition, but DOE data for 2021 shows the total workforce in the energy sector is down 5% from 2016.
The decline reflects job losses in the oil and gas industry following the collapse of the shale drilling boom in 2015, then a pandemic five years later that drove oil prices into negative territory for the first time in history . Between 2016 and 2022, employment in the oil and gas industry will decline by 22% to less than 700,000 overall.
Spurred by Wall Street investors to cut costs, oil companies are now producing about half the barrels of oil they did in 2016, according to Michael Montgomery, an economist at S&P Global Market Intelligence.
"It took some time, but falling oil and gas prices triggered a process of massive cost reductions and consequent productivity increases," he said.
broken promise
The rapid development of clean energy is expected to offset job losses in the oil and coal industries, with the latter losing more than 22,000 jobs, or 30% of its workforce, between 2016 and 2022.
During the 2020 presidential campaign, Biden said his approach to climate change will result in the creation of 10 million new jobs. At the 2021 climate summit, he said it was "not about the threat of climate change, but about the opportunities it offers to tackle climate change."
And some of them are: Wind energy jobs increased by 17% to more than 113,000 people between 2016 and 2021, and the number of jobs related to modernizing the country's energy system increased by 111% to more than 35,000 people. .
But the solar industry is lagging behind.
Solar experienced a hiring boom in the mid-2010s as developers raced to build residential and commercial systems before the federal tax credit expired in late 2016. - Solar jobs fell for two consecutive years and then started to grow again in 2019. The course continues during the pandemic, but the sector has not yet reached the employment levels in 2016.
Abigail Ross Hopper, president of the Solar Energy Producers Association and a former senior State Department official in the Obama administration, acknowledged that efficiency gains have led to job losses, but said she expects employment in the sector to double by 2030.
"I think we've reached the limits of our effectiveness," he said. "Each maturity chart shows a significant increase in inventories, so I think we'll see a corresponding increase in labor demand."
New funding
The Biden administration and Democrats in Congress are seeking historic investments in clean energy under last year's Cut Inflation Act, which provided $369 billion in funding for solar, wind, battery and other technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, including helping to recruit workers.
Garrett Nielsen, deputy director of the Energy Department's solar technology office, said in a statement that despite the recent recession, he expects the solar industry to create "better-paying jobs" in the future.
"The good news is that annual solar installations continue to grow and the stimulus for the Cut Inflation Act is accelerating the clean energy transition," he said.
But it's unclear whether the solar industry can come close to that goal.
Analysts at energy research firm Wood Mackenzie expect growth at half the rate predicted by the Biden administration, citing government efforts to slow imports of solar panels, which now account for 80% of the global market.
The stakes are high for Houston and Texas.
The Houston area lost about 125,000 oil and gas jobs between 2014 and 2020 and could lose an additional 270,000 to 650,000 jobs as a result of the transition, according to an analysis by McKinsey & Co. to the non-profit Greater Houston Partnership of Energy.
But the same analysis shows that up to 560,000 new jobs could be created in the region if we switch to clean energy.
This effort is already underway, with cities, universities, startups and major oil companies working together to make Houston a hub not only for oil and gas, but also for clean hydrogen, batteries, wind and solar.
Asked whether solar layoffs threatened those efforts, Jane Stricker, a former BP chief executive and senior vice president of the Greater Houston Partnership, said that, like other industries, clean energy is constantly evolving and becoming more efficient. a job may not necessarily be a job in the future.
"The next thing will always appear," he said. "A big part of what our economic development team is working on is making Houston a center of energy production."
There's not much concern among developers who are actually building solar farms: They're too busy.
In the San Joaquin Valley, Jung says he has so many solar energy projects that he's not sure he has enough workers to fill all the jobs.
"I've received bids from contractors for projects starting in April and I'm looking forward to the 700-megawatt project later this year, which is expected to be delayed," he said. "I've been standing in line for years."
