Guest post by David Middleton
In 2008, candidate Barack Obama ran an ad with this opening line: “The hands that built this nation can build a new economy. The hands that harvest crops can also harvest the wind.”
And then it showed men working on roofs: “The hands that install roofs can also install solar panels.”
The ad was directed at a group Obama was acutely aware he had to win over — white, working-class men. A quarter of those same men deserted Democrats in 2016, according to a New York Times analysis, and voted either for Donald Trump or a third-party candidate.
On Tuesday, President Trump is trying to start making good on his promises to many of those same white men — coal workers. The Trump administration is doing an about-face on President Obama’s climate and environmental policies. The president signed an executive order with a goal of taking restraints off businesses and boosting the coal industry.
“He made a pledge to the coal industry, and he’s going to do whatever he can to help those workers,” a senior administrative official said Monday ahead of the executive order’s signing.
Speaking at the Environmental Protection Agency headquarters, Trump said a “new era” in energy production is starting Tuesday.
Surrounded by about a dozen coal miners, he said, per NPR’s Jennifer Ludden, “You’re going back to work.” He pledged to “end the war on coal and have clean coal, really clean coal.”
But there are problems with both Trump’s nostalgic Make America Great Again coal promises and Obama’s radical vision for a reshaped economy.
Trump’s ignores the reality of a changing energy industry. Solar jobs, for example, have taken off over the past decade. The Obama administration tried hard to incentivize clean energy (so much so that it got caught up in the Solyndra scandal. The head of Solyndra was an Obama campaign bundler. Obama visited the company and touted it. His administration incentivized companies like it. In 2011, the government helped Solyndra refinance, but just months later, the company failed).
But solar now accounts for some 260,000 energy jobs in the country, the majority of which are held by installers. That’s almost four times the number of coal industry jobs, about 70,000, as of May 2015, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And that industry has been on a steady and steep decline over the past 30 years…
[…]
In the energy industry, solar is outpaced only by the oil industry, according to a major report by the Solar Foundation. And solar’s gotten cheaper to produce (despite Trump’s proclamations during the campaign that he loves solar except that it’s expensive).
[…]
Why do journalists, environmentalists and liberals (redundant, I know) confuse energy production with jobs programs? The only way an economy can successfully grow in a healthy, robust manner is through increasing productivity.
What is ‘Productivity’
Productivity is an economic measure of output per unit of input. Inputs include labor and capital, while output is typically measured in revenues and other gross domestic product (GDP) components such as business inventories. Productivity measures may be examined collectively (across the whole economy) or viewed industry by industry to examine trends in labor growth, wage levels and technological improvement.
BREAKING DOWN ‘Productivity’
Productivity gains are vital to the economy, as they mean that more is being accomplished with less. Capital and labor are both scarce resources, so maximizing their impact is a core concern of modern business. Productivity enhancements come from technology advances, such as computers and the internet, supply chain and logistics improvements, and increased skill levels within the workforce.
Read more: Productivity Definition | Investopediahttp://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/productivity.asp#ixzz4cooRyEry
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Putting coal miners back to work will be a byproduct of increased coal production, not the purpose of it.
Here is a plot of U.S. energy production from oil & gas, coal, wind and solar power in million tonnes of oil equivalent (Mtoe).
I used the production numbers for oil & gas and coal rather than the consumption numbers because U.S. fossil fuel employees don’t produce imported fossil fuels. I used the consumption numbers for wind and solar because those were the only numbers (we don’t import or store wind and solar power). I added oil and gas together because its the same group of employees who produce the oil and the gas.
Here is a plot of Mtoe per thousand employees:
Which energy employees are the most productive?
Even if I added in midstream and downstream fossil fuel-related employees, they would still be an order of magnitude more productive than wind energy employees and two orders of magnitude more productive than solar energy employees.
References
American Wind Energy Association
BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2016
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, All Employees: Mining and Logging: Coal Mining [CEU1021210001], retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CEU1021210001, March 29, 2017.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, All Employees: Mining and Logging: Oil and Gas Extraction [CES1021100001], retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CES1021100001, March 29, 2017.
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there are 94 million americans out of the labor force. If the gov’t wishes, it can have full employment in renewable energy production by distributing pedal powered generators to each of the 94 million, and tie their gov’t benefits to kilowatts generated and fed into the grid.
Make it a requirement for all able bodied socialist welfare recipients under the age of 65 to participate and call it a ‘preventative health care program’!
Add in those over 65 once they have drawn out everything they ever put into Social Security.
The break even point, for people retiring today, is 84-87 years of age. The ALE is less than that. There will not be too many who “draw out” more than they paid in.
Rooftop solar is a sub-sector entirely driven by state and federal tax credits. That’s credits and not deductions by the way so it is the electricity for rich people act with significant cost shifting to the poor and middle class on grid portions of their bills. Also, the national hype campaign solar jobs and economic significance from industry advocates was done just prior to a wave of solar layoffs and closures. Those remaining jobs are even more dependent on tax credits for survival, at least in the rooftop sub-sector. I rather doubt you will hear that fact checking anytime soon, especially from NPR. I call your attention to the failure of SunEdison, production layoffs at First Solar, plant closure by Sun Power, and distressed moves by Tesla to save SolarCity.
“What NPR Misses About X”
Longest book ever written.
Creating jobs is Socialism. Creating wealth is Capitalism.
That’s because to a Socialist, labor is capital.
Not quite, socialists think that only labour adds value, so all profit belongs to labour.
Socialism is a collectivist system and like “Hotel California” . In a capitalist system a social community may evolve but in this (voluntary) case the individual may leave. Socialism, communism and fascism are branches of the same tree and only differ in ways the state limits individual freedom (culturaly, economically).
The NPR piece linked to a Vox article which said,
After all, if we want clean energy to take over the world and help us stop global warming, then we need it to be cheap. And one reason solar power remains (relatively) expensive is that it’s so labor-intensive — requiring more manpower per megawatt-hour than any other power source. The natural gas industry employs as many people as solar but provides nearly 50 times as much energy.
http://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/2/7/14533618/solar-jobs-coal
Installing solar panels on rooftops is honest work but it is just one step above installing shingles which is very hard work, dangerous work and in many places seasonal work.
“seasonal work.” How come advocates touting high solar-job employment have been coy about that fact? (To a lesser degree, it’s probably true of wind generator installers too.)
The charts showing the inefficiency of the renewables work force indicates that we are creating the equivalent of a social welfare system based on renewables jobs.It’s about as useful as paying the unemployed to manually pick up rubbish so they can maintain some self esteem by being ” employed”. In contrast to the renewables workforce at least the environment is cleaner.
“…..A prototype solar road in Idaho is broken again only a few weeks after it caught on fire.
Dubbed “Solar FREAKIN’ Roadways,” the project has received $3.9 million in funding and been in development for 6.5 years, but is still plagued by major problems. A Twitter user caught images of the roadway being repaired Wednesday after breaking again…….”
http://dailycaller.com/2017/03/29/first-solar-freakin-roadway-in-the-us-breaks-again/?utm_campaign=atdailycaller&utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=Social.
$3.9 million. And here I thought this solar roadway stupidity was only happening in northern France.
Leaving aside anything else David’s graphs suggest that no matter what Trump does coal miners are
going to continue to be unemployed and that more of them will lose their jobs in the future. David’s figure
one shows that coal production is down and that oil and natural gas are up. His figure two shows that coal
miners are getting more and more productive. Hence you are going to new fewer and fewer coal miners in
the future. And the same trend on increasing productivity of coal miners and reduced demand for coal is apparent global. So while coal might have a future being a coal miner doesn’t.
I think they should cover those sheared off mountain tops left after coal removal with solar panels and wind turbines…
The rooftop solar lobby is too busy force feeding solar onto rooftops with lease agreements and tax credits (not deductions) for the rich at 3x the cost of competitive solar to be bothered with mountaintops. The wind lobby would do it though and then get ratepayers to foot the bill after the fact to connect it to the grid with new transmission lines.
As a conscientious environmentalist, I would have thought you would want them to cover them with new mountain tops, grass and trees.
Replace one ugly thing with something more ugly and worthless to boot. What a bargain.
Like most modern environmentalists, Griff’s environmentalism is for show only.
David I’m given to understand that after mountaintop removal there’s only bare rock and debris filled valleys.
and no one paying to restore it.
No doubt in time nature will heal it (the coal tip across from my Grandmother’s house I remember from the 1960s is now a planted forest) but just now, why not use it?
It would provide jobs for miners who lost out when they closed mines and went for blowing the top of things…
See slides 14-20.
https://www.slideshare.net/tlheadley/special-mountaintop-mining-powerpoint-finished
Instead of “being given to understand”, why not do some research about the actual laws in effect today. They are crazy, to the point that some areas must be restored to better than when the mining was begun.
But then that would not be “being given to understand” (short hand for I am too lazy to research it).
In fairness to Griff, a Google search of “mountaintop mining reclamation” will return abut 5,000 Enviromarxist propaganda pages for every fact-based page.
Sure—and what about the mountain tops that wind turbines come in a cut down hundreds of trees and shear off an area and cover it with concrete? There is a coal mine to wind plant in Wyoming. They spent MILLIONS to put everything back like it was, right down to the sagebrush. Then they ripped and tore and put in turbines and turned the place back into an industrial area. Wasted millions. Currently, you must reclaim a coal mine, so MILLIONS are spent, only to rip and tear everything up for the industrial turbines. Now you tell me THAT is environmentally friendly. I’ll pass on the offer and actually help save the areas, not pillage them.
Let’s make it really simple.
You can employ 10,000 people running on treadmills to produce energy, or 100 digging coal to produce energy.
The first is a really bad idea, despite the fact that it “creates” 9,900 more jobs.
Jobs are a COST in any economic analysis. The fewer people you have producing the same amount of stuff, the wealthier we all get.
” “You’re going back to work.” He pledged to “end the war on coal…Trump’s ignores the reality of a changing energy industry. Solar jobs, for example, have taken off over the past decade.” ~NPR
The truth about coal is that it is an incredibly versatile resource. When we use coal for energy there are hundreds of by products that supply other needs.
The heartless environmentalists do not remember (and they make sure that no children ever find out) that the use of this rock, through a little applied science, provides chemicals and materials which replaced hundreds of other, limited raw materials.
We used coal to replace burning wood; but also the byproducts of coal allow us to replace wood slats in homes with sheet rock. We use plastic, fibers, dyes, fungicides, and many other things which come from coal. The use of coal for energy supports the massive capitol and equipment needed to go underground and take out these coal seams, and so we have these inexpensive sources for thousands of products. In short, coal is also providing jobs to those who use coal tar products, like every one in the lumber industry. (What good is untreated lumber?) But the “war on coal” involves a war on every preservative, every dye, every plastic, every fungicide, every fertilizer and every other product we get from coal. So really it is a war on coal and a war on any science used to make things from this simple rock. You have to include these other industries in the coal industry.
Zeke, I am very much aware of hydrocarbon based, aka petrochemical, dyes, fibers, and more. I am aware of coal tar, but its usage has been much more limited. I am aware of a handful of coal tar based pharmaceuticals. I am aware of 1000s of petrochemical based ones. Turning mostly carbon into hydrocarbons is, it seems to me, a waste of perfectly good coal. Sure, water shift, in-situ coal liquids and gasification exist, but given that there is at least as much available in hydrocarbon sources for this, why do it if you’ve got the hydrocarbons already?
Well no coal is the same at a molecular level. There is no “coal molecule” so with the diversity comes chemically flexible uses for it.
But since the Trump Administration is addressing the “war on coal” it is a good time to see that coal is incredibly useful for these other industries and will affect all the related manufacturers.
To answer your question:
companies that use coal for fire proofing, medicines, perfumes, food preservatives, ammonia, fertilizers, pigments, artificial silk, synthetic rubber, linoleum, insecticides, wood preservatives, disinfectants, explosives, roofing, paint thinner, etc etc are not wasting coal. The war against all of these other products is actually simply part of the war on coal. (And this war on coal is looking more like a war on applied science and chemistry to me.)
One thing I am arguing is that because we use coal for power, coal miners own and maintain the heavy equipment and capital needed to extract coal from many locations.
http://heavyequipment.com/wp-content/uploads/200-01-051.jpg
Very, very impressive diggers for mining. This gives a plentiful supply of coal which benefits manufacturers who need it for other products. And the sulfur from the coal plant scrubbers is used for drywall.
And for your question, “but given that there is at least as much available in hydrocarbon sources for this, why do it if you’ve got the hydrocarbons already?” I would simply answer that plainly competition between suppliers is a pillar of economic freedom, and competition is an essential part of efficient use of resources, aka microdecisions. There may be any number of reasons why one raw material is chosen over another. I was just reading about James Young, and how he transitioned to shale to obtain paraffin when he needed to, for miscellaneous reasons.
No Zeke, there is a world of difference between coal and hydrocarbons. Coal is 90+% carbon, and for good coking or anthracites, 95%+ carbon. Hydrocarbons are half or better hydrogen and half or less carbon.
cdQuarles says, “Coal is 90+% carbon, and for good coking or anthracites, 95%+ carbon. Hydrocarbons are half or better hydrogen and half or less carbon.”
I do not follow your argument. When coke is made from coal, coal tar and coal gas is a byproduct.
Coke is necessary for maintaining temps in excess of 1450 degF for making cement and for smelting ore.
Coal tar and coal gas are then used to make other products.
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jonathan_Mathews2/publication/255559883/figure/fig2/AS:339698867294209@1458001929865/Fig-3-The-molecular-representations-of-bituminous-coal-a-Fuchs-and-Sandoff-structure.ppm
There are any number of compounds present in varying quantities, including nitrogen and hydrogen, which yields ammonia or nitrogen fertilizers. Coal’s value as a mineral resource is obvious. Why fight it, eh?
Another thing, Zeke, how are you going to get ammonia out of coal? Ammonia is a nitrogenous compound. Coal, again, is very much carbon with a few other things associated with it.
I’m not saying that coal isn’t valuable, just not agreeing with some of your assertions, given that coal is nearly all carbon. I didn’t mention molecules, just chemical classes. Coal is a lot less flexible as a chemical feedstock due to its very high carbon nature. What I’m saying is that it is a waste to use coal in lesser value uses than using it in high value uses.
There is no one “coal molecule.” I provided a link to some chemical structures of coal. There is plenty of O, H, S and some N, depending on the bed.
All in, I’m paying 17.5 cents per kWH.
In large part because of charges now billable directly through to the customer by Oncor here in Texas. Some of that is to pay for transmission lines bringing back what is supposed to be CHEAP wind power.
Alas, no, it just doesn’t work that way for the customer.
Thanks, Obama, and thanks to the Texas State Legislature.