Guest post by David Middleton
From Bloomberg…
The number of U.S. jobs in solar energy overtook those in oil and natural gas extraction for the first time last year, helping drive a global surge in employment in the clean-energy business as fossil-fuel companies faltered.
Employment in the U.S. solar business grew 12 times faster than overall job creation, the International Renewable Energy Agency said in a report on Wednesday. About 8.1 million people worldwide had jobs in the clean energy in 2015, up from 7.7 million in 2014, according to the industry group based in Abu Dhabi.
[…]
Why is this newsworthy? Energy production is not a jobs program. The fact it takes more people to provide for 1% of our energy consumption than it takes to provide for 52% (67% if imported oil is included) is not a positive aspect of solar power.
The following charts are calibrated in “millions of tonnes of oil equivalent” (MTOE). The data are from the Bloomberg article, BP Statistical Review of World Energy June 2015 and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
What’s that? You can’t see the Oil & Gas bar on the chart? I can fix that.
I am using 2014 because that is the most recent year for which I had comprehensive data. It was also the peak employment year for the oil and gas industry (~200,000 employees vs ~165,000 solar employees). Since 2014, U.S. oil & gas employment has declined; however our total oil & gas production continued to climb…
The fact that the United States leads the world in oil & gas production is a bit more significant than the fact that the typical solar industry worker is less than 1% as productive as the typical oil & gas employee.
Data Sources
BP Statistical Review of World Energy June 2015
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
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Green jobs that are subsidized by public loot. Irrelevant.
They have compared the entire solar energy industry to just upstream petroleum jobs. A more fair comparison would be oil and gas extraction jobs to solar panel installers: ~200,000 workers (amid a downturn) compared to ~120,000 workers (amid huge government incentive and subsidization)
The upstream AND downstream petroleum industry directly employs about 800,000 people, with about another 900,000 in retail.
And like the article says, what society gets from each of these job sectors is strikingly contrasted. 63% of the nations energy VS 0.43%
Well, this surely puts to pasture the tired old ‘renewables are killing jobs’ argument. Now the skeptics are reduced to ‘renewables create many more jobs, but they don’t count’ which, I’m sure everyone agrees, doesn’t sound half as swanky.
And as much as I would love to believe that renewables are a mean, green job creating machine, this data comparison doesn’t really pass the ‘does it smell like BS?’ test. It’s virtually impossible that you’d need ~39,000 more workers per equivalent unit for renewable energy. The labour costs would be incredibly enormous. Anthony must have made a couple of order of magnitude mistakes somewhere.
And finally, the level of disbelief here at WUWT is really quite a sight to behold. So renewables can produce grid level electricity at prices competitive or even lower than fossil fuels (as witnessed by all the current non-subsidized low price records being set for utility scale renewables all across the world), all the while producing more local jobs. And that is a bad thing? As opposed to funneling huge amount of oil money to the middle east oil sheikhs, or, in the US, the extremely rich oil-elite?
Cheers,
Ben
benbenben sez:
Well, this surely puts to pasture the tired old ‘renewables are killing jobs’ argument… Anthony must have made a couple of order of magnitude mistakes somewhere… And finally, the level of disbelief here at WUWT is really quite a sight to behold. So renewables can produce grid level electricity at prices competitive or even lower than fossil fuels (as witnessed by all the current non-subsidized low price records being set for utility scale renewables all across the world), all the while producing more local jobs.
May I deconstruct? Thank you:
First, “renewables killing jobs” is a specious argument. Give me the money and I can hire people all day long to dig 10’x10’x10′ holes in the ground, and then move the holes north every six weeks. Plenty of jobs for all! But a waste, just like ‘renewables’ jobs.
Next, since all your posts are ridden with endless mistakes and simpleton errors, you’re no one to criticize someone else. Especially our host, who graciously allows you to post here. You’re always telling other people to be polite. Look in the mirror.
Finally, when subsidies are accounted for, there is no comparison: fossil fuels are far less expensive than ‘renewables’. Yesterday someone posted a link to windmills that were receiving an extra subsidy of 25¢ per kWh — and that subsidy will increase every year, until it exceeds 50¢/kWh! In the mean time, clean coal power is being produced for 7¢ – 9¢ per kWh.
Where do you get your misinformation, benben? From your pals at Yale? You know, the same place that folded its ‘green outreach’ for lack of interest. Without more gov’t loot, they just couldn’t make it in the real world.
Same-same with ‘renewables’.
benben says, ”
Well, this surely puts to pasture the tired old ‘renewables are killing jobs’ argument.
=================================
Benben, do you wish to see economic studies that demonstrate that for every green job created, two to three jobs are destroyed? Energy is the life blood of EVERY economy.
Your replies to me have become more polite. Thank you good sir! And DB,
“Yesterday someone posted a link to windmills that were receiving an extra subsidy of 25¢ per kWh — and that subsidy will increase every year, until it exceeds 50¢/kWh!”
Honestly, I don’t even know where to start debating someone who thinks those kind of numbers are relevant on a global scale for currently built capacity. Come on skeptics of WUWT, correct your fellow skeptic?
I believe our mistake has been trying to talk sense with this lot, facts and reason have obviously had no effect. Instead, here is the most raw and basic illustration of how the renewable energy industry creates wealth.
“renewables killing jobs” is not within the energy industries.
The concern for jobs is that crazy renewable mandates and inefficient solar and wind (not base load power) will drive up energy costs (Obama told us electricity rates will necessarily skyrocket) and force industries that use lots of energy (steel, semiconductor manufacturing) to go out of business or relocate to countries with cheaper energy.
RWTurner, when a persons religion requires them to not understand something, you can usually count on them not understanding it.
Over and over again.
Ben,
How can you type with those blinders on?
Oh wait, you aren’t wearing blinders, you just “misreport” on what you see.
You can’t get anything right, yet you don’t have any trouble with spelling or sentence structure…
Let’s see… could you be fibbin’ to us to support some agenda?
Are you yet another paid propagandist showing up here?
benben,
What??? Do you understand economics at all? Wait, the answer’s obvious. NO. The solar industry did not replace the jobs lost to oil and gas. They co-existed. Now, solar is going to need to pick up many, many more jobs to cover oil and gas, raise wages and lose their subsidies. All of which is economically impossible without the government forcing people to double their cost of electricity. You’re in favor of that, I take it?
The ONLY time you can count renewable as “grid level” is when they are NOT attached to the grid. It’s a complete lie to say anyone attached to a grid is not using oil or gas (in most cases). Virtually no one connected to the grid is using renewables only. It’s a convenient falsehood often used by those who think magically concerning solar and wind.
The “extremely rich oil elite” consists of thousands of hard-working people providing lights and fuel to America, many of which are now unemployed. Of course, class envy and math illiteracy convince the not-to-bright that oil and gas are somehow elitist. Maybe if people could actually think and not emote, they’d understand this. Envy and laziness are just so much easier.
Cheers.
with grid level I meant utility scale renewables delivered to the grid.
The ‘extremely rich oil elite’ does not consist of unemployed people. I mean, come on. It’s like you’re debating your fantasy green fanatic instead of me. I’m talking oil sheiks, Koch brothers, Vladimir Putin, et al.
And as remarked above, the LCOE of wind is comparable to fossil fuels, so clearly if you replace fossil fuels with renewables in a gradual manner (i.e. replace old fossil fuel generating capacity with renewables), then the price would not increase. Until you reach such high levels that you’d need storage, but we are not even remotely there yet so no need to worry about that for another decade at least.
benben
“Until you reach such high levels that you’d need storage, but we are not even remotely there yet so no need to worry about that for another decade at least.”
********************************************************************************************
Finally, the truth is admitted. Renewables can only appear to exist favourably while piggy-back riding on the spare capacity in the grid. Once they reach a level where they would be missed there is a “storage” issue.
So nice to know that they are “irrelevant” in production terms. Shame that we all have to pay for these irrelevancies through our energy bills.
SteveT
benben May 26, 2016 at 8:41 am
Hi. So, clever boy, how much oil do we the USA import these days from the Mid-East? Next the Brits, Australia, and Canada. Actually, who is importing Mid-Eastern oil? Come on, put up or shut up.
Next, research the Tax liabilities between the two forms of energy production. Oh, and by the way at some point the fossil fuel companies are going to realize that the subsidizes of renewables violate a whole mess of international trade agreements on subsides and dumping. It will make for some interesting court cases, once one nation realizes it can sue another due to its renewable policies.
michael
And how much income inequality does your newfound oil riches cause in the US? Now you have US based oil-sheikhs. Congratulations, you win the prize!
There are already anti-dumping tax measures in place for solar panels.
Wow, poor benben is still upset that people are permitted to have more money than he does.
Nobody is hurt because some people are allowed to keep the money they have earned.
And here we see the true goal of the econuts. It isn’t about wealth and prosperity; it’s about dragging everyone down to the lowest common denominator. Watermelons like benny don’t care about solving poverty or *gasp* allowing free people to freely trade amongst themselves. His ilk’s (ill’s?) goal is simple: command the world into equal misery. That’s the only fair solution.
“And how much income inequality does your newfound oil riches cause in the US? ”
I suppose you have a point, because “I mean, come on,” in the stone age there was very little income inequality. There were still the haves and have-nots, but it was certainly less in absolute terms than in the US today. The chiefs probably had a few extra spears and all, but in general you could say that everyone had very close to the same wealth. Wow, I didn’t know sophism could be so fun.
benben answers a question with a question:
And how much income inequality does your newfound oil riches cause in the US?
That’s not an answer. But benben has no credible answers, he only has his catechism.
This has zero to do with income inequality. If benben cares so much about that, he can split his welfare check with another bum. And since benben is so jealous of oil company profits, he can buy a share or two of Exxon, and… profit!!
Also, I note that benben’s comments are often in the middle of the day, in the middle of the workweek.
He needs to get a real job.
benben claims to live in Europe.
Though I do doubt that he has a real job.
MarkW,
benben also claims to be at Yale. So who really knows?
actually what the top chart shows is the large number of layoffs in the oil&gas sector since the price crash, and the large numbers of layoffs in the coal fields as company after company goes bankrupt because of government hostility to coal powered electricity generation.
Anyone living in an area where oil production/exploration are top job makers knows of the boom/bust cycle that has been going on in the industry since it’s beginnings. Right now we are in a bust, and a lot of my neighbors are part of that downward slope.
So, that’s how renewable energy caught up to fossil fuels…it didn’t.
Fossil fuel jobs were reduced until they dropped to match the renewable workforce.
Sneaky how greens do that, ain’t it?
Typical socialist. Wants everyone to concentrate on the one small part of the picture that doesn’t make him look bad, and ignore the rest of reality.
Yes, jobs are being created in the solar/wind sc@m. The jobs that are being lost are in every industry that has to buy the now unaffordable electricity, or whose company had to move to a new country where the power supply was more predictable.
I see that benben is still repeating the lies about grid stability that were refuted months ago.
4x as costly for Solar and Wind versus Conventional power. Use NPV (Net Present Value) versus IRR (Internal Rate of Return). Calculate all costs in terms of subsidies, externalities to the “marketplace,” … …
The accounting on most solar and wind is fraudulent. You are already seeing this with Solar City, Tesla… You need at least an 8 year run with project Peter robbing project Paul to get too positive cash flow by my estimations. Then you need a little bit of luck to go along with it. Any raising of finance rates in the Lease-buy-back programs will bankrupt a project upon refinance, when, the initial investors use up the tax breaks. Initially under the Obama regime, it appears to me companies exaggerated engineering, planning, legal, supply chain… to exaggerate costs while milking the Treasury and Farm programs set aside for these boondoggles. This creates a secondary problem as projects drop in price: You need to build more and more projects of Peter robbing Paul to cover the losses as the begin to roll in from initial, more expensive, projects in which all tax breaks have been consumed. (eg. the rat has to run faster and faster on the wheel to stay solvent). O&M has been understated as is now being realized, and, margins are very thin to boot. That being said, I advocate continued research and small scale development for the day we might need these technologies.
Is it possible that each of these solar energy employees creates less energy than they consume driving to work? That would be the ultimate irony and very typical of any government sponsored enterprise.
I’d bet that’s accurate more often than not. In particular given the propensity of wind and solar installations to be in remote areas far from population centers.
And it’s just about guaranteed to be true if you factor ALL the energy costs of wind and solar installations vs. the energy they produce over their useful life span. From mining of materials needed for their construction to manufacture of the panel/windmill components to transport of the materials and manufactured components to the site to erection of the installation to maintenance and repairs, including the fuel consumed by the fossil fuel powered vehicles that transport the people doing the repairs and maintenance to the installation sites from their places of residence. No way that the energy that is produced by such installations is close to the energy that goes into them.
The ultimate example of what occurs when governments pick the winners and losers (the ultimate losers always being the taxpayers).
The taxpayer who is subsidizing ‘renewables’ I guess should be added on as wind-solar part time employees too?
Gary Pearse May 26, 2016 at 8:58 am
The taxpayer who is subsidizing ‘renewables’ I guess should be added on as wind-solar part time employees to?
Don’t say that, or even think that. Good god man what if the government hears you. “Why yes, what a wonderful idea, now lets tax him on it and make him file IRS tax forms and pay Social Security.
michael
David:
Your presentation lacks clarity and presents some extremely odd pictures.
Whenever I see a straight line growth, over time, I immediately think fudge. Your presentation of the growth rate for wind and solar jobs looks like it is from some straight line growth number, not observations.
Then you present a chart that is somewhere between exponential and large multiplier. Even if you are trying to ‘show’ the oil industry employees, it is incorrect.
It would be better if you converted it to equivalent oil energy per employee.
Plus there are many hidden jobs in the eco industry. Jobs that the eco industry is very desirous of obscuring as their number would highlight glaring problems and inefficiencies. e.g. maintenance crews that are contracted in or the temporary employees who collect bird and bat carcasses before the ‘official’ counts.
The substance of your argument is correct; the sheer costs and inefficiencies of alleged renewables are untenable., even exorbitant.
CNN Money (http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/12/news/economy/solar-energy-job-growth-us-economy/) shows the same figures and the figures are from the Solar Foundation. They show jobs going from 119,000 to 209,000 from 2012 to 2016. It shows virtually a straight line from 2010 to 2016.
That does not convey accuracy. A straight line employment growth rate is fallacy.
The numbers are what they are. The “straight line graph” is from the Bloomberg article. The oil industry job numbers are from the BLS.
MTOE is a measure oil “equivalent oil energy.” The MTOE per employee is equal to 1/Employees per MTOE. 1/166 is a very small number. 1/39,402 is a much smaller number.
If it helps, I can convert MTOE to BTU…
BTU per employee (2014)
Solar 1,007
Oil & gas 238,689
The graph only covers a 4-year time span. Employment growth will often exhibit straight line patterns over short time spans.
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k247/dhm1353/dhm1353157/Line_zpstzas5s8o.png
OK. We can lay the blame for misrepresentation of data on the Bloomberg propaganda machine.
There is no such thing as a straight line in employment figures! As soon as one sees that straight line, it means the numbers are estimated, i.e. fudged.
Every annual/decadal employment cycle shows the effects of season, workload, opportunity, worker supply and economy distress. When it shows up a straight line, especially growth, something is not accurately representative.
Your ‘short time cycle’ for oil and gas employees is not as straight as Bloomberg’s solar. Even there, that employment chart is a combination of actual reports and estimations. Any actual oil and gas company’s employment chart would show much wider swings over the course of a year.
***
The first MTOE chart has employees for the left index.
The second MTOE chart, where you ‘show’ oil and gas employees; The left index is logarithmic.
Take the level where oil and gas’s 166 employees reach.
By implication, falsely, the solar employees appear to contribute equally to the oil and gas.
Yes the chart is logarithmic, quick glances do not convey that information.
Perhaps Bloomberg does show MTOE per employee somewhere, but I don’t visit Bloomberg sites.
Here on this site:
• Solar should show that each solar employee is worth 25.38TOE. (Another number that appears too optimistic, that straight line nonsense).
• While oil and gas MTOE, each employee is worth 6,024.1TOE. Meaning that every oil and gas employee brings the world 237.37 times more energy than any solar employee.
As eco-energy installations age and expand, those numbers for solar TOE per employee will decline. There is very little if any employee effort reduction benefits to solar installation efforts. But, as equipment ages there will be a decline in energy captured and additional requirements for maintenance.
The MTOE charts are mine, not Bloomberg’s. Bloomberg never mentions MTOE or any other measure of productivity. The y-axis on both charts is denominated in Employees per MTOE. The first one is linear. The second one is logarithmic. I explain in the post why I added the logarithmic version.
I am certain that Bloomberg painted a grossly over optimistic picture for solar. Yet even with their data, the typical oil & gas employee is 237 times as productive as a typical solar worker.
Atheo you say, “It would be better if you converted it to equivalent oil energy per employee”
================================
I think he did n the MTOE charts…
http://extraconversion.com/energy/tonnes-of-oil-equivalent
The government could hire 1 million people to dig holes, and another million people to fill them in.
And it would have the same impact on the economy.
Ultimately, nuclear powerplants are the way to go. The radioactive wastes can be made harmless with the proper management. What’s not to like?
Government-promoted Renewables are more trouble than they are worth, and a huge waste of taxpayer money. They are a diversion from forming a realistic, nation-wide electric power plan.
Yup. The U.S. should be building molten salt reactors in mass numbers. And conducting scientific research into cold fusion. Those represent real solutions (MSRs) and real possibilities (CF) to meet future energy needs. “Renewables” are just a stupid government boondoggle.
Luke asks, ‘Where is all the money associated with producing electricity with fossil fuels going if it isn’t going into jobs? ‘
I suggest he does an online Economics 101, which will begin with the factors of production: land, labor and capital.
He will learn that modern industrial economies are more capital intensive than traditional economies. The study of microeconomics may be reserved for Economics 102, but his professor may present outlines of specific sectors, such as energy. She will explain that the energy sector is very capital intensive relative to the economy as a whole. As a consequence, value added per worker is high and so are skill levels, wages and salaries.
Since renewable energy adds so little to the economy, it will probably not be part of the course. But he can ask his question. The professor will probably mention the cash flow for the capital employed in producing power (depreciation, interest on bonds, taxes, dividends). If she does not, then he can find the information in the Value Line Investment Survey, which periodically does sector reviews.
The generation of jobs in subsidized industries is a favorite topic for many economists. If included in his course he will learn how subsidies distort the economy by promoting patterns of production different from what would arise if consumer preferences had determined what is produced.
In effect, a regime of subsidies is a top-down approach to determining production rather than a bottom up approach by which consumers determine production. This top-down approach is better than the old Soviet approach, which used production quotas. But when applied to the energy sector, it nevertheless represents a great departure in the way the US economy works. This is because energy drives the whole economy.
Certain promoters of top-down control of the energy sector both in the UN and the US are quite open about the objective, which is to reduce drastically the standard of living in developed countries by de-industrialization through raising the energy prices. In effect, these modern Luddites and Pol Pots claim that they will preserve the natural world by dismantling modern industrial civilization. Democracy may have to suppressed to achieve this.
Which explains their opposition to fracking and the efforts to hobble this activity by regulation.
Because natural gas has only one atom of carbon to four atoms of hydrogen, natural gas is our best route to a low-carbon economy. And it is the biggest challenge to the political elitists who believe they know what is best for consumers.
Natural gas is now so cheap and plentiful and so low in carbon that the climate scare loses its force. There is now no reason to suppress natural gas consumption or to favor renewables over natural gas.
What is needed is more focus on the carbon footprints of solar, wind and bio-fuels.For a start, wind and solar take lots of energy to manufacture, build and operate. Bio-fuels use lots of energy to produce and transport.
All three renewable fuels use lots of land, labor and capital compared with the energy they produce.
Neither science nor economics supports wind,solar or bio-fuels. Politics has trumped science and economics. We are about to see if the American people will allow the economy to continue to degrade or whether they will play their Trump card.
“What is needed is more focus on the carbon footprints of solar, wind and bio-fuels.”
i disagree completely – but go ahead- the result will be cap and trade just like in Australia.
that’s right, carbon based life form- your breath will be taxed no matter who says what and you will pay because you have no concept of anything but obedience and you will perform the religious ritual of the voter and ‘pray’ for hope and change every time the morlocks sound the siren.
like the farmers in iowa do their corn and bean rotation, you will do your whine and vote – but never will you stop paying the tithe. and so who cares what you think? your job is to pay. the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth is you will pay and complain, rinse, repeat.
and it will be the same as it ever was – but you will keep doing your bit to keep the death spiral going.
In related news, the gender card in clean energy is on display, probably with your money.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-05/su-cwi052616.php
The word “clean”, “renewable”, etc. should be in quotes. It’s not clean or environmentally friendly from recovery to reclamation. The drivers are renewable, not the technology. It is a good source of local, intermittent energy production; and a good source of regional, intermittent, low-density energy production. The marketing hype and people’s need to believe in a harmonious existence exceeds the reality. Their faith is misplaced.
As for actual job (i.e. production, productivity) creation, it’s better for people than expansion of the public and private welfare industry, when it is based on a real and sustainable premise.
The next target of cost reduction in solar PV is balance of system costs (BOS) from installation time and construction manpower needs, at least in utility scale projects that make sense. Hyping solar employment is really hyping unproductive rooftop solar with major tax credits as a percent of total project cost. Tax credit mining is a big business that does not take “no” for an answer, as seen in the whining by NRDC and Solar City in Nevada.
And here we have the prime case demonstrating that the Left is really just filled with economic creationists. Greed energy (no typo) will always be labor intensive as this shows, which means that it will always be expensive. It simply cannot match the productivity of truly viable sources of energy. The only way it can compete is by declaring its competitors witches.
https://youtu.be/X2xlQaimsGg?t=208
Why do you think it has always been pushed as a “Jobs Program?”
Shows the losses in the energy sector with lower oil prices.
How long do the crews stay on the hot job sites? Is there a workers’ comp provision for green heat strokes?
So it now takes more people to produce less energy. This is progress? Sadly if you’re a democrat, or a socialist, or a democratic socialist, the answer is probably yes. And, as if this weren’t already a stellar enough achievement all on its own, the intermittent and unreliable energy that is produced is expensive to boot and problematic to manage! Thank you sir, may I have another?
A politician goes to an engineer and tells him that he needs a large ditch dug. The engineer tells him that he can do the job with one person with a backhoe or it will take 30 people with shovels or 300 people using spoons.
The politician will pick the third option because it creates more jobs.
There’s an old story about Alan Greenspan visiting China. He saw a ditch being dug by hundreds of men using shovels.
He commented that the same job could be done in less time with a backhoe.
The foreman responded that doing it this way employed more people.
Greenspan responded that they could employ even more people if they replaced the shovels with spoons.
I never thought I would see the day that socialism would become part of USA.
Reblogged this on gottadobetterthanthis and commented:
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In Oklahoma, we know what the energy sector means. We also innately know how efficient the oil and gas industry is. Our state booms and busts with each cycle of oil prices. We whine when gasoline prices are high, but we all prosper then. We all rejoice when gasoline prices go down, but then we start noticing the pinch most everywhere else.
Wind and solar don’t help, but plenty of politicians and interests groups make the case anyway. Solar just isn’t up to the challenge of large scale power production. It never will be. It is, needing only more time to mature, useful, and it will be significant in specialized applications. Wind, however, is just a waste. It is good for lonely pumping stations. That is about it.
We must continue with coal, and we must embrace nuclear. It isn’t our only hope; it is the only possibility. It is the only thing that keeps our children alive long enough to know their own great grandchildren.
Yes, oil patch jobs dipped in 2015 because the price of oil dropped below the profitability of drilling but now at $50/barrel the numbers are coming back up. A family member who had been out of work for months in the western US oil patch was just recently called back to work.
Australian scientists recently produced the worlds most efficient solar generating device.
http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2016/05/australian-researchers-develop-the-worlds-most-efficient-solar-panels/
What isn’t mentioned in the article is the cost right now for one of these. From memory in a TV newscast it was over AU$3500. Of course in the newscast the presenter stated that costs would come down.
Global surge in employment :
https://www.google.at/search?q=stiege+mauthausen&oq=steinstiege+maut&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0.21391j0j4&client=ms-android-samsung&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8#q=mauthausen+stairs