CREDIT: Department of Energy (DOE).
Clean energy. It’s the only possible way to go right now, and there’s more promise in clean energy than anything else, but Pendejo-elect Trump is making sure that America will not only miss out on all the money clean energy can bring, but the millions of jobs which go with it. No, much better to commit to filthy energy, which can stuff a few select, already overflowing pockets with more money, making sure that the environment gets destroyed, and to keep on denying climate change. Oh yes, that’s just so much better, by golly, that will make America great again, you betcha. :insert near-fatal eyeroll here.:
A few days ago, Joe Romm at Think Progress had an article up about the clean energy, and how it will be a $50 trillion industry, and how Trump has determined that the U.S. will not be a part of it.
The best charts of 2016 reveal the clean energy revolution is unstoppable. At least, it is unstoppable globally.
But if the United States makes a historic blunder and shifts its focus back toward dirty energy just when the rest of the world has made a $50 trillion (or higher) commitment to a carbon-free future, then it won’t reap the vast job-creating benefits of the remarkable ongoing cost reductions shown in chart above.
That article is here.
Today, there’s an article about all the jobs created by clean energy.
Renewable energy jobs in select countries (excluding large hydropower). CREDIT: IRENA.
China is preparing to go big on the only major new source of sustainable high-wage employment in the coming decades.
Beijing’s newest 5-year energy development plan invests a stunning 2.5 trillion yuan ($360 billion) in renewable generation by 2020. Of that, $144 billion will go to solar, about $100 billion to wind, $70 billion to hydropower, and the rest to sources like tidal and geothermal power.
The Chinese National Energy Administration said in a statement Thursday the resulting “employment will be more than 13 million people.”
China is already doing way better than the U.S. in this regard, and President-elect Trump’s commitment to opposing clean energy will not make things any better. As the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) reported last year, China already has over 40 percent of all jobs in renewables, globally, while the U.S. has under 10 percent (see chart above).
We know clean energy jobs are the only major new source of sustainable high-wage employment in the coming decades for several reasons.
If you’re one of those Americans who fell for Trump’s “jobs!” bullshit, perhaps you should look into moving to China, I hear they are hiring. The full article is at Think Progress.
Well, the right people will still have jobs, so… what huddled, raging masses?
It makes me near to crazy, all this. A commitment to clean energy could be a revolutionary industry here, taking the economy away from a consumer base, and provide truly good jobs all the way around. It would also be great for the environment, but can we do that here in Batshitusa? No, because it’s just so much more important to be spiteful assholes, and cling to that filthy energy crap.
Yet another giant steaming log of evidence that Republicans don’t care at all about jobs or the economy, but only maintaining the status quo. Keep the money and power where it is. Maintain the Universal Basic Income for the 1% while destroying income for everyone else.
Yeah, although there’s some critique of the economic sustainability of a PV solar industry and simultaneously some critique of current, front-loaded costs, …
…setting up lease-to-own solar where land-/home- owners have PV installed on their roofs or other appropriate bits and make monthly payments to the manufacturers/installers instead of to fossil-fueled utilities makes it possible to get much better and more appropriate long-term financing AND spreads payback over decades so there is less boom-and-bust risk.
Yes, it’s still true that at some point demand will fall as we are replacing panels at end-of-life rather than adding new capacity …but that would be decades away (at least 2 decades, anyway, and I doubt we can get the popular movement to do things even that fast) and when we get there, we’d start having more and more of the leases end, which means MUCH cheaper power for production of all sorts of high-tech products that now are sourced overseas or in close proximity to land-devouring big-hydro. With cheap manufacturing, more industry can return to the US for the economics of it while the world benefits from the environmental aspects of solar-powered fabrication.
Then we manufacture (at cheaper costs due to advances in technology being manufactured as well as the fully amortized power generation) solar power for parts of the world that haven’t managed a full conversion yet. Then we’re at least 40 years out and, hey, it will be time for a new economic foundation for the country anyway. Just as fossil fuel production, then steel-based industry, then digital-information industry replaced each other with several decades separation each time, a solar-based industry doesn’t have to be sustainable forever…four-to-six decades would be more than enough to witness great changes in how people communicate, travel, grow food, shelter themselves, provide environmental services (water, sewer, etc.), manage health, and provide other services. Which of those is most likely to take over as an economic foundation, I really don’t know.
But I don’t have to know exactly which to see in history the likelihood that going big on solar despite the expected finite life-span of solar industry’s ability to sustain a larger economy is a good bet that will get us far enough for new transformations to become feasible.
For a capitalist, Trump sure doesn’t know shit about growing an economy or even making money.
It’s not just energy production, it’s also energy conservation that can drive the economy.
I know, I’m probably boring you all to death with my endless tales of renovating our house, but we’re dragging it kicking and screaming to the level of a new house.
Those renovations are subsidised*. Not only are we getting 15k deducted directly, we also get the loan at half the market rate which is at least worth the same again. But that money, we’re spending it on local small businesses**. The most traditional blue collar jobs you can imagine, the very kind of job your run off the mill not the best in school dude will have.
*That’s still the Marshall Plan money in action, btw. What a good idea to keep that money in a public bank where you can use it for that kind of thing.
**Of course a rather big part of the money is also spent on high tech material, so the manufacturing industry benefits as well.
Months back, I posted about Mark Trahant’s article which pointed out that if N. Dakota went clean and green, right now, it would boost the economy enormously and bring at least 18,000 permanent jobs in-state, rather than most of the oil jobs being filled by out of state workers, who will go home at some point. But noooooo, if you ask most any nDakotan, they just mutter “oil good”, and couldn’t fucking tell you why. They revel in their ignorance, and it will be their destruction, but do they give a shit? No.
There are some things happening in this country. As of last month I am getting 95% of my electrical power from PV solar — and I don’t have any panels on the roof. Instead, I’ve signed on with NRG Community Solar.
They build solar farms that feed into the grid. I pay them for the output of 19 panels (out of thousands) and get a credit for that on the bill from my provider.
This approach has a number of benefits: my house doesn’t have to have a good orientation for solar (it doesn’t), and the solar farm is optimally oriented. I don’t have to do any maintenance on the panels. I’m a homeowner, but I wouldn’t have to be — an apartment or condo resident could do this. What’s more, the rate I pay for the solar energy is fixed for 20 years (it’s currently slightly lower than what I was paying from the local utility).
I also can be a little more sanguine about my overall carbon signature. I’m sure it’s still a lot higher than the global per capita average (long commute!) but it’s better than it was.