Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
1. Price
It bears repeating that solar power has become the lowest-cost source of electricity in
many places. This has become obvious in island economies that were once completely
dependentondieselfueltogenerateelectricity.Butit'salsotrueinmanyretailelectricity
markets like the one you're part of when you pay the bill from your local power com-
pany. Already companies like Sungevity and others like it create an immediate savings
for homes and businesses across the country. It's true in wholesale markets too: in Cali-
fornia the solar company SunPower has more than 700megawatts under contract to con-
nect to the utility grid, with prices below the cost of gas-based electricity. Energy isn't a
winner-take-all market, but solar will be a big part ofit. The bottom line is that solar will
undercut new nuclear, coal, and gas plants in most parts of the country by the time those
new plants could even be built because of solar power's rapid cost reduction.
2. Jobs
There are several times as many jobs per megawatt hour in the production of solar elec-
tricity as in the coal- or gas-fired steam-power industry. Millions of people worldwide
are employed in the solar industry today. With the right policy support, the number of
people employed could double each year or two, which means we have leverage in ad-
dressing unemployment both in the United States and overseas.
It's not easy to launch the businesses that create these jobs, and uncertainty in the
policysettingsandthefinancialenvironmentaddrisk,butit'sclearthatthesolarindustry
has the potential to be a major employer well into the twenty-first century. As coal con-
tinues to shed jobs in the mining sector, and the capital-intensive fossil-fuel power-plant
industry fails to engage more workers, solar power will become an attractive option for
policymakers because it offers a wide range of job opportunities throughout the industry,
not only in the factories but also beyond them—jobs that can't easily be off-shored, es-
pecially in sales, service, and maintenance.
3. Speed
The fastest-growing energy source on Earth, solar had a compounded annual growth rate
ofmorethan40percentforthefirst10yearsofthetwenty-firstcentury.Althoughgrowth
cooled in 2011 because of fiscal trouble in Europe, and may slow down further for a few
more years due to fallout from the Great Recession, this figure is incredible in any in-
dustry by any measure, especially as our economy is still struggling to get back on its
feet. This is also why, though comparatively small in total numbers installed to date, sol-
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