Infographic: How many jobs would solar create?

[n2doc]

BY JESS ZIMMERMAN
18 AUG 2011 12:32 PM



Stronger solar policies could create over 100,000 jobs in just a few years, according to this (excerpted) infographic from One Block Off the Grid. That's not a lot, proportional to the unemployment crisis, but given that CERTAIN PEOPLE are always talking about sustainable energy as a job-killer, it's pretty good. And jobs would only go up over a longer period. Over ten years, if state legislators instituted strong solar incentives, Texas would stand to gain 21,714 jobs and Florida 16,858, not to mention thousands of jobs in other states.


http://www.grist.org/list/2011-08-18-infographic-how-many-jobs-would-solar-create


http://1bog.org/blog/infographic-solar-saves-america/

[gateley]

1. K&R! nt

[Peter1x9]

2. No matter how many "incentives" there are,

the actual manufacturing work will just end up in China anyways. A lot of the "Green" jobs are already there as it is.

[Southerner]

3. Any estimates on what the cost per solar job would be to the state and local governments?

There would probably be infrastructure development/maintenance as well as tax incentives to pay.

Great initiative by the way.

[Firebrand Gary]

4. K&R

[JDPriestly]

5. What about California? We could be doing a lot better.

We have about as much sunshine as any state in the union in Southern California. Of course, the San Francisco area is a different matter.

But Southern California could produce solar energy that would make as important a contribution to our state's economy as the produce and other food grown in the Central Valley.

I think that there are a lot of things that we could do -- such as extensions and resloping of roofs to increase the amount of solar energy we could produce. Why aren't we doing this?

[XemaSab]

6. Once you get off the coast in Northern California, it's often sunny

According to the National Climatic Data Center, Redding is the second sunniest city in the United States. It's supposedly sunny 88% of the time here, as opposed to Yuma which is sunny 90% of the time.

Fresno and Sacramento are in the high 70's percentwise, but LA and San Diego are only 73% and 68% sunny, respectively. San Francisco is supposedly 66% sunny, but I don't know where in the city they measured that at.

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/online/ccd/pctposrank.txt

One of the arguments for pushing solar in the Valley is that we have a lot of people and a lot of air conditioners. Since air conditioners are mostly used during the afternoon and early evening when it is sunny, rooftop solar would do a great job of bringing that energy peak down.

[JDPriestly]

7. Yes. We normally get a lot of sun in East LA, but this year we have had

a number of overcast days. I don't know how much of it is due to a light film of smog.

It is a big mistake to think that we have an choice with regard to finding alternative energy sources.

We cannot drive gasoline fueled cars for much longer. The oil is getting harder to get. I don't know how long people will put up with the damage that extracting oil from shale will inflict on the environment.

We need to start switching to alternative ways to fuel our transportation now so that we won't have to go through a crisis when we get $8 per gallon and more gas.