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25% US Renewable Electricity Standard Will Create 274,000 Jobs

February 8, 2010 | 10 Comments

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Washington, D.C., United States [RenewableEnergyWorld.com] A new study released by Navigant Consulting finds that a 25% by 2025 national Renewable Electricity Standard (RES) would support hundreds of thousands of new American jobs and prevent a near-term collapse in some industries. Job growth in the wind, solar, biomass, waste-to-energy and hydropower industries would particularly benefit the Southeastern U.S. and manufacturing states whose Congressional delegations have had a history of voting against incentives and other measures designed to support the renewable energy sector.

The "Job Impacts of a National Renewable Electricity Standard" study was released by the RES Alliance for Jobs and found that a 25% by 2025 national RES would support an additional 274,000 renewable energy jobs over a no-national policy option. The 25% figure is significantly higher than RES mandate in current legislation and the expected jobs supported in the current House and Senate provisions would be considerably lower.

In addition, the study found that without stronger near-term targets than currently envisioned, industries like wind will experience flat job growth and long-term stagnation, while the U.S. biomass industry could collapse altogether. The RES Alliance recommends raising near-term RES targets in federal legislation to 12% in 2014 and 20% in 2020.

"A strong Renewable Electricity Standard is crucial to create a stable investment environment and grow this highly promising sector. Without a strong RES, the U.S. wind industry will see no net job growth, and will likely lose jobs to overseas competitors. A target like 25 percent by 2025 would allow American wind companies to support double the amount of jobs than without a policy -- about 125,000 additional jobs. That's a gain our country cannot afford to pass up," said Don Furman, senior vice president for development, transmission and policy at Iberdrola Renewables.

States that stand to gain the most from a strong RES, according to the RES Alliance / Navigant Consulting study, include:

Louisiana, Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee Georgia and Florida that can benefit from substantial biomass and municipal solid waste-to-energy
Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Indiana, which will gain from growth in manufacturing for a wide range of technologies
North and South Dakota, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska and Illinois, home to major wind resources
Colorado, Arizona, Oregon and California, where solar, wind and hydropower have significant growth potential
States that do not currently have renewables standards or targets like Indiana, Florida, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Alabama

The study emphasizes that while tax credits continue to play a critically important role in preserving the viability of existing facilities, an RES is needed in order to support both near- and long-term investments.

To read the full report, click here.

Bioenergy, Hydropower, Ocean Energy, Solar Energy, Wind Power

10 Reader Comments

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prefersolar

February 9, 2010

Biomass means burning and creating pollution. Solar and wind create little in the way of pollution compared to burning and don't release greenhouse gases.

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robtemery

February 9, 2010

Biomass is a renewable energy fuel considered carbon neutral. Additional carbon isn't released into the environment such a coal and natural gas and with present emissions control equipment is not environmentally unfriendly.

Biomass can play an important part in utility scale solar. The maximum capacity factor of solar is 25-30%. Many of the CSP solar projects are comprised of a natural gas boiler with an efficiency of less than half of a Combine Cycle Gas Turbine. If solar direct steam technology is combined with biomass, its carbon foot print is reduced during the day with solar and during the evening the biomass is used eliminating costly solar thermal storage.

Unless I misread, 274,000 jobs are considerably less than the millions touted by the Administration and 52% of these would be manufacturing for which there is not any law to prevent moving offshore.

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Anonymous

February 9, 2010

1.6 billion of the 2 billion stimulus package that went into green jobs have gone overseas. I'm one of the Americans who was hoping that stimulus would create a green job I can take. Unfortunately, all it has done is completely crowd a small domestic market, misleading Americans into thinking that this is the sector where all the jobs are and has forced a lot more competition into a field that needs to expand fast.

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brian-ballek-52819

February 10, 2010

robtemery,

re: 274,000 vs. millions of jobs. This report refers only to renewable electricity generation whereas the "millions" of jobs you've heard refer to probably include much more, e.g. efficiency, clean transportation, demand response, smart grid, and other kinds of clean tech that don't get applied to power generation.

You're right about combining solar with biomass to make power more dispatachable and continue generating power at nicht and on particularly cloudy days. Solar can also be combined (if no other options are viable) with fossil fuels, e.g. gas or even coal. In much of the developing world (where increasing diesel costs are very hard to cope with) solar/diesel hybrid is the way to go: lower costs for fuel and maintenance, longer engine life and yet the same amount of power on demand.

Solar thermal storage has it's place though, particularly if you're generating power in a very hot, arid region that doesn't produce loads of biomass. In that case a closed system with heat storage like molten salt may be the only option. Whether such a system can produce power at an acceptably low cost per kilowatt hour remains to be seen.

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Anonymous

February 10, 2010

We can create 2,000,000 jobs by hiring 1,000,000 people to dig holes and then another 1,000,000 to fill the holes back up. Unemployment problem solved!

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robtemery

February 10, 2010

In reply to Brian. Solar thermal storage definitely has its place. With a capacity factor of 25-30%, CSP solar will only be viable with some form of energy storage (thermal or otherwise) or combined as a hybrid. The other option for CSP solar is peaking, but the solar insolation peaks around 1:00 pm while demand is usually around 4-5:00 pm. I used biomass as an example of a hybrid because of the previous comment.

Solar direct steam technology is a match made in heaven as a combined cycle hybrid. But, almost all of the interest is from China and Germany so I will be traveling to Germany at the end of this month. Adage a subsidiary of Areva and in an alliance with Duke Energy, were very interested in solar direct steam technology combined with biomass. Areva just acquired Ausra (Direct Steam Generation).

A solar/diesel hybrid is an idea I have been tossing around but for the Caribbean. Raser Tech has a small modular generation unit that uses hot geothermal water to generate electricity. A solar collector can easily provide hot water, but I have been unable to obtain any numbers regarding cost and efficiency.

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robtemery

February 10, 2010

What the Politicians left out about a Global Economy was transition to a Global Standard of Living. It is a world market including employment.

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simpsonm

February 10, 2010

I am an engineer in Oregon with 4 years of experience outside the energy field. I have been trying to find a job in renewables for over a year now. Iberdrola certainly hasn't created many new jobs within the US. Vestas is even worse. I suspect this is because both countries have corporate headquarters oversees. Looking back, I wish I had relocated to Texas or California right away.

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jay-rosenberg-53116

February 10, 2010

All,
We can produce 100% of todays baseline energy in the USA withn 7 years. My company is pioneering high efficiency, low cost, mass manufacturable "heat" engine (RET) which are heat source agnostic: renewable energy stock (Geothermal, solar thermal), waste heat, biofuels, fossil fuels.. Has lead to novel design for wind power turbines as well. An off-grid RET Genset running on natural gas would provide 24x7 power (and CHP) w/o hugely expensive grid upgrades. and be impervious to grid failures, such as storms. On-site Renewable RET generated power costs less than fossil powered/ delivered by grid. RET powered vehicles are another major market, but a 1 million mile duty cycle, plug and play engine tech is avoided as it will render automotive to a commodity. . Renewable biowaste (excreta et al)/ biomass powered RET Gensets will provide the next level to micro-economics, powering / empowering small.. medium sized industry, plus power for basics and being linked into the global economy. Its not the physics, its the politics is to paraphrase A. Einstein. Jay R CEO Sannerwind@gmail.com

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mike-holly-17241

February 17, 2010

Our renewable energy company COULD support RES ONLY with feed-in tariffs, not continuance of competitive bidding which allows utility monopolies to rig the bids in favor of their company, affiliates and friends.

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