Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
right by the country. This industry is creating jobs and value for families as well as fos-
tering independence from fossil fuels, which cost our nation blood and treasure. And the
best news is that there are many more jobs to come.
The Reality of the Solar Employment Engine
Here are some statistics that illustrate the reality of this employment engine. From 2010
to 2011, the solar industry doubled, making it one of the fastest-growing sectors in the
economy. More than 100,000 Americans now work in the industry—twice as many as in
2009 and almost twice the number of Americans working in coal mines. These Amer-
icans are staffing the approximately 5,600 solar companies that now exist in the United
States, most of which are small businesses, where most of the growth in employment
occurs in the economy—not in the big businesses of corporate America. What's more,
these businesses now exist in all 50 states.
And we've also been doing well in the global game. The United States was a net ex-
porter of solar products in 2010, the last year for which we have numbers, and we're
likely to see that this trend continued in 2011. In 2010 we had a net surplus of $2 billion
in solar products traded globally. We were even a net exporter to China, the world's sol-
ar giant, by more than $240 million. Solar energy is a global industry that benefits from
open and fair markets, and the bottom line is that trade in solar products has been good
fortheUnitedStatesbyexpandingexportopportunitiesfordomesticmanufacturers, cre-
ating jobs, and driving down costs to consumers, which makes the product all the more
accessible.
As discussed earlier, most jobs in the solar industry are not in manufacturing but in
the sale, marketing, financing, and installation of these products, so the lower the man-
ufacturing cost are, the more demand there will be for jobs in these other areas. There's
a risk that our momentum will be lost, and many jobs with it, because of weak leader-
ship,backwardpolitics,andtherepressionoftheSolarAscentbythevestedintereststhat
oppose it—especially coal, nuclear, and gas-fired-electricity companies—so we have to
demand that our leaders stay on the right path.
Although China is currently the big fish in solar-panel manufacturing, new US man-
ufacturing facilities have begun operations in Arizona, Michigan, Mississippi, Ohio,
Pennsylvania, and Tennessee. These are states that hemorrhaged jobs at the end of the
2000s due to the recession, and the solar industry has helped put communities in these
states back to work. Not all of these companies will make it—some may have already
fallen out—but that's the nature of an innovative sector trying something new in a strug-
gling economy.
