“Wind industry jobs jumped to 85,000 in 2008, a 70% increase from the previous year, according to a report released Tuesday from the American Wind Energy Association. In contrast, the coal industry employs about 81,000 workers. (Those figures are from a 2007 U.S. Department of Energy report but coal employment has remained steady in recent years though it’s down by nearly 50% since 1986.) Wind industry employment includes 13,000 manufacturing jobs concentrated in regions of the country hard hit by the deindustrialization of the past two decades.
The big spike in wind jobs was a result of a record-setting 50% increase in installed wind capacity, with 8,358 megawatts coming online in 2008 (enough to power some 2 million homes). That’s a third of the nation’s total 25,170 megawatts of wind power generation. Wind farms generating more than 4,000 megawatts of electricity were completed in the last three months of 2008 alone. Another sign that wind power is no longer a niche green energy play: Wind accounted for 42% of all new electricity generation installed last year in the U.S.”
Maybe that light at the end of the tunnel isn’t a train after all.
Not EVERY decision in this world is (or should be) financially based. Good financials just makes it easier to get the bankers to buy in. Good planning looks at the long-term not the immediate payback to the short-term investor.
Sarge
Ok from a strictly economic point of view that makes ZERO sense. Either the numbers are not including similar “Employment” or Wind power is SOL.
85K people employed to create less than 1% of the power while 81K workers produce 54% of the power?
Using those numbers in wages alone wind power would hit the market at around 54X more expensive than coal. I know that is not the case so I’m guessing the numbers included in both categories are not of a similar nature.
The other numbers seem encouraging…assuming wind is 54X as expensive as coal
85K people employed to create less than 1% of the power while 81K workers produce 54% of the power?
Seems bogus. Generally if an energy source employs twice as many people with similar jobs then it will cost twice as much… this is simple math. This doesn’t work if we are importing the fuel or if the fuel is wildly fluctuating commodity. The nice thing about wind is that there is no fuel cost, so the cost should be stable and predictable.
From what I’ve seen wind is pretty cost efficient, but for obvious reasons we can’t use too much of it since it isn’t reliable. When the wind isn’t blowing we must go to other sources. Solar is a little better simply because it works best during sunny summer days when demand is likely to be high for AC.
Good news. That leap will wane in 2009 as carbons are so much cheaper now than they were from 2005-2008. But we all know natural gas and oil prices will rebound. Wind will always be a great source of energy. A realistic goal is for 5-10% of U.S. energy to come from wind by 2020. I would think the cost would be more fixed than natural gas, as it doesn’t need to be discovered and extracted, just put in place. There’s no way wind and solar can “take over” for coal or natural gas in our lifetime, but they can and should play a much bigger role. Energy from tides and geothermal heat has hardly even been tapped. Green energy just makes sense. It’s unlimited.
Foreign wind turbine manufacturers such as Gamesa have been locating plants in the US, particularly in PA and some other rust belt areas. They are taking advantage of our surplus of manufacturing labor…
This activity would show up as wind energy jobs in the USA but may not play a part in the actual production of electricity here in the US, as the products may be exported.
