Renewable Energy Means Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!

The following is taken from an editorial published by the Plain Dealer written by Myles Murray, a doctoral candidate at Case Western Reserve University's Solar Durability Lifetime Extension Center:

"Recently, a world record was broken during two unseasonably sunny days in Germany when solar power generation provided as much electricity as 20 nuclear power plants running at full capacity. This remarkable event has been generally over-looked by both regional and national media and policy-makers. This solar-power generation accounted for 30 percent of total German electricity consumption on May 26 and 50 percent on the following day. This is a truly remarkable feat, especially considering that Germany gets 30 percent less sunshine than we do here in Cleveland, and less than half of that in many places in our country."

I'll take this opportunity to recommend a book: The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World, by Jeremy Rifkin. To be honest, this was not a fascinating read.  But the fundamental idea is vital to understanding where we are in terms of energy policy.  1) Carbon based fuels are in the process of being phased out.  It is already happening and not because of the environmental movement. It is happening because a billion Chinese and a billion Indians are becoming part of the industrial world. I heard a gentleman on the radio telling how 10 or 20 years ago, the Chinese built an 8-lane outer-ring highway around one of their major cities. The first few years there was only a trickle of cars. Today, the highway is bustling. The rural masses of China and India are getting industrial jobs and buying cars and using electricity. The cost of carbon-based fuel will inevitably become more expensive than the cost of renewables. 2) The transformation to renewables will bring about a return to full employment. One of the arguments now against renewables is that the infrastructure is lacking. But if you look at it differently, this problem is our great opportunity. The building of the lacking infrastructure will bring about full employment. Today our government and our country are investing in expensive, and very dirty forms of carbon fuels: digging up forests to get at the tar sands, blasting to pieces the underground shale to release natural gas, blowing mountains apart to access coal. The number of new jobs created is minimal, since the goal of those industries is to make big profits while minimizing investment. The Tar Sands of Alberta are a typical example. The forest is destroyed and the tar sands turned into a sludge. Then the sludge is piped to already existing refineries in places like Louisiana. When petroleum was a new concept, in the 1920s, its development created jobs across the economy. Refineries were being built. Scientists were employed developing new products based on petroleum. The car industry was developed, which in turn spurred the growth of the steel industry. The same will happen when we finally move our investment to renewables. New industries will spring up everywhere, and if it is managed right many of those industries can be new family businesses. Imagine companies installing solar panels on homes. Electricians working on the electric grid. Scientists and technicians perfecting the solar panel technology.
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