Summary. Several economic analyses of the expanding role of renewable energy in the U. S. California America America
Introduction. Among developed, industrialized countries of the world, the United States
This post summarizes reports on employment and economic impacts of developing renewable energy technologies without an emphasis on market mechanisms.
Overview of Employment in Green Jobs. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has recently defined green jobs as
- Jobs in businesses that produce goods or provide services that benefit the environment or conserve natural resources, or
- Jobs in which workers’ duties involve making their establishment’s production processes more environmentally friendly or reducing natural resources use.
In general, energy produced from renewable sources is considered green. This includes electricity, heat or fuel, which could be derived from sources such as wind, biomass, geothermal heat content, solar, ocean kinetic energy, hydroelectric power, and landfill gas and municipal solid waste.
Green Jobs in the U. S.
Source: The Environmental and Energy Study Institute http://www.naseo.org/news/newsletter/documents/2011-06-02/EESI_Fact_Sheet.pdf
The table shows that currently most employment originates in the mature sectors of hydropower and ethanol. This post presents analyses showing that other sectors have vast potential to expand employment in future years.
Meta-Analysis of Job Creation by Renewable Energy. Wei, Patadia and Kammen published a review estimating projected job growth due to renewable energy sources (Energy Policy, Vol. 38, pp. 919-931, Feb. 2010). Accounting for ambitious goals in energy efficiency, and assuming a renewable portfolio standard (RPS; the portion of energy production derived from renewable sources) of 30% that is commonly proposed for 2030, they find that over 4 million full time equivalent job-years will accumulate over the interval beginning in 2009. They report that all renewable energy technologies create more employment per unit of energy than found for coal and natural gas, the current fossil fuel sources for power generation.
Details. Wei and coworkers analyzed fifteen primary reports. They devoted considerable effort to bring the varying definitions and approaches employed in the individual reports into a single unifying framework for analysis, arriving at projected job-years of effort per unit of energy produced averaged over an assumed lifetime of a particular generating technology. Importantly, job losses from phased out fossil fuel generation were accounted for in their assessment.
Jobs involved in construction, installation and manufacturing (prior to operation) and maintenance and operation (after placement into service) of renewable generating facilities were spread across the full predicted lifetime of a facility to arrive at lifetime average values for a given technology. Both direct jobs (those involved in the functions just identified) and indirect jobs (such as preparing input materials and facilities service) were included.
Business-as-usual (BAU ) assumes that no mitigation measures are being taken in future projections. BAU involves an average annual projected increase in generation of electricity through 2030 of 0.74% (U. S.
The graphic below shows the results, in cumulative annualized job-years, over the baseline given by BAU , from 2009 to 2030, for the cases of eliminating the increase in electricity demand (Flat energy demand, gray line), or medium increase in electricity demand (Medium EE, black line).
Source: Wei, Patadia and Kammen; http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421509007915
The blue line for BAU shows new job creation due only to improved energy efficiency without any new renewable generation facilities. In contrast, without any contributions from energy efficiency, the cumulative job-years increase due only to new renewable energy facilities (increasing RPS), is shown by the points lying on the y-axis. The higher RPS assumptions have higher job-years created because they require installation of new renewable generation facilities. The effects of EE and RPS are additive, as seen from the fact that the four lines are essentially parallel.
California’s Energy Efficiency Experience. California University of California Berkeley California U. S.
Total per capita electricity use in
Source: University of California Berkeley
The report transmits several conclusions. As a result of savings from energy efficiency, Californians redirected their cash flow toward other goods and services; when the full extent of this transfer and distribution into the economy is considered (economic multiplier effect) about 1.5 million full time equivalent jobs were created, having a payroll of about US$45 billion, even when considering job losses in conventional energy generation businesses. The analysis showed that this favorable result arose because households saved energy expenditures of US$56 billion from 1972-2006. For every job lost in fossil fuel-driven generation, however, more than 50 new jobs were created throughout the broad economy.
At the time of writing of the report, detailed policies to implement the new Act had not yet been put in place. The report’s economic analysis predicts that California
Wind Energy. Land-based wind generation in the U.S. BLS ), in the 10 years from 2000 to 2010, generating capacity has grown from less than 3,000 MW to 35,000 MW (please see Note 1 for definitions), with 10,010 MW put in service in 2010 alone. 35,000 MW of capacity generates enough power to supply about 9.7 million American homes. As shown in the following graphic, wind power is expanding rapidly as a source of electricity in the U. S.
Nevertheless, in 2009 wind constituted only 1.8% of the total U. S. U.S.
Wind farm sites, and sites of manufacturing facilities that make wind turbine components are locations at which employment in wind energy occurs. In the map below, sites of wind farms in the U.S.
The shading from dark to pale green shows exponentially decreasing installed wind generating capacity in the state, from a high of 8,500 MW to a low of 1 MW.
Source: U. S.
The following graphic illustrates the dispersion across the U. S.
In this map of the U. S. ORANGE BLUE , new facilities announced in 2009; and GREEN, facilities online before 2009.
Source: U. S.
According to the American Wind Energy Association as cited by the BLS , about 85,000 workers were employed in the wind industry, including related fields. This number is a little larger than shown in the table above. Judging by the expansion of wind energy as foreseen in the earlier graphic showing projected installed wind generating capacity in future years, the number of workers could expand by about 15-fold, to as high as 1,275,000 jobs, by 2030.
Offshore Wind Energy. As shown in the earlier graphic, offshore wind generating capacity is foreseen to expand greatly in coming years. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has evaluated the potential for offshore wind energy. A minimum criterion for effective wind generation of electricity is an average wind speed of 7 m/sec (16 mi/hr). The map below shows average wind speeds over coastal and inland water, indicating that much of the accessible shoreline exceeds the minimum average wind speed.
The U.S. U. S.
The NREL report assesses that the U.S. U. S.
Adding 54 GW of offshore wind to U. S.
The report “A National Offshore Wind Strategy: Creating an Offshore Wind Energy Industry in the United States”, issued by the U. S. Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, February 2011, presents a detailed analysis of offshore wind energy development. It estimates that by 2020, the cost of generation could be brought down to US$0.10/kWh by envisioning 10 GW of installed capacity, and by 2030, down to US$0.07/kWh envisioning 54 GW installed.
Solar power covers a range of capacities and technologies. Photovoltaic (PV) solar generates electricity directly from sunlight using semiconducting photo-active panels; most use silicon as the semiconductor. Concentrating solar power (CSP), or thermal solar, uses mirrors to concentrate sunlight on to a fluid to heat it; the fluid then transfers heat to convert water to steam, which then runs a conventional turbine generator.
Solar power is a small but rapidly growing component of the renewable energy mix in the U. S. Much capacity is found in residential and commercial scale installations. In recent years utility-scale projects have been planned and installed using both PV and CSP technologies (see the previous post).
A census of the solar industry in the U. S.
The census found that as of August 2010:
- There are 93,502 solar workers in the
United States - Solar job growth over the following 12 months was predicted to be 26%, representing nearly 24,000 net new jobs. This expansion is against a background of employment nationwide in the
U. S. - Over half of all solar employers expected to increase their number of solar jobs in the following 12 months, while only 2% anticipated reducing solar staff.
- Employers from all of the manufacturing, installation, wholesale and other subsectors expected significant employment growth over the following 12 months.
Energy Efficiency. Energy efficiency relates to efforts to obtain more effective results from energy inputs. These include
- products, services, or methods that improve energy efficiency;
- use of equipment, appliances, and vehicles that are energy-efficient;
- improvements in the energy efficiency of buildings; and
- improved energy storage and distribution (e.g. Smart Grid technologies, cogeneration—combined heat and power).
Two previous posts on this blog deal with energy efficiency (Energy Efficiency in Public Buildings and A U.
Considering buildings, for example, it is estimated that efficiencies can improve the utilization of energy by up to 25%, and provide sufficient savings to yield full payback of efficiency investments in very short times. The Environmental and Energy Study Institute has summarized employment groups that contribute to energy efficiency projects, below.
Source: The Environmental and Energy Study Institute http://www.naseo.org/news/newsletter/documents/2011-06-02/EESI_Fact_Sheet.pdf
Conclusions. The reports discussed here do not explicitly consider tax-based or market-driven charges for use of fossil fuels or for greenhouse gas emissions. The economic benefits and expansion of job opportunities they present result from the beneficial effects of seeking energy efficiency and imposing renewable portfolio standards, for example. Many of the results here reflect models that predict future benefits of expanding the role of renewable energy in the overall energy mix.
The case history for California Wikipedia , California California U. S. U. S.
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Note 1. A watt is a unit of power, quantifying the rate at which energy is provided or consumed. It is a small unit.
A kilowatt (1,000 watts, Kw) is a more manageable unit of power. 10 100-watt light bulbs represent 1 Kw; an electric toaster would be 1-2 Kw.
Generating capacity is the rate at which an installation provides power, such as in millions of watts (megawatts, MW) or billions of watts (gigawatts, GW).
Energy is a measure of total work done, given by power x time and for electricity is watt-hours. Again this is usually given in terms of kilowatt-hours, KWh. 10 100 W light bulbs burning for 1 hour would use 1 KWh.
© 2011 Henry Auer
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