For the first time in three years, the Solar Foundation’s annual census of U.S. solar-related jobs, released Wednesday, showed a solid increase, with the South—not known in the past for a particular friendliness to renewable energy sources—making significant gains. Last year, 5,600 new solar jobs were added to the nation’s total, according to the 10th survey conducted by the foundation, bringing the total to 249,983, a gain of 2.3% over 2018. The foundation counted 93,000 solar jobs when it conducted its first census in 2010. Growth in the decade since has risen by 167%.
Welcome as the gains are, in 2016, the foundation’s census tallied slightly more than 260,000 solar jobs. Thanks to the uncertainty caused by Trump’s solar panel tariffs, investors retreated a bit from the field, reducing the number of projects that might otherwise have been built in 2017 and 2018. But, as David Ferris at Energywire reports (behind a paywall), solar costs have continued falling despite the tariffs, and many proposed fossil fuel projects simply no longer compete financially. The foundation predicts a 7.8% increase in solar jobs this year. At least part of that rise is expected because investors want to complete projects before the federal solar investment tax credit phases out for residential projects at the end of 2021. Utility-scale projects will continue to receive a 10% credit on which Congress has so far not set a sunset deadline.
In addition to those nearly quarter-million full-time solar workers, 94,549 others spent some portion of 2019 job time on solar-related work, bringing the total to 344,532 people who worked in the field full-time or part-time.
Florida led the 31 states that gained new solar jobs in 2019.
There were setbacks, too. Minnesota saw a 6% drop in its solar workforce. And California lost 2,500 solar jobs, Ferris writes, mostly of salespeople “as solar installers gave up on selling solar systems by ringing doorbells. But homeowners in California bought solar arrays anyway, motivated by a different force at the door: wildfires.”
Going forward, there will be plenty of new solar jobs in California, which, beginning Jan. 1 this year, requires all new homes to have rooftop solar, although there’s a fight brewing over this.
Said Solar Foundation president and executive director Andrea Luecke, “The solar industry has been one of America’s leading job creators over the past decade, as evidenced by our annual National Solar Jobs Census. In just 10 years, despite facing many challenges, solar has grown from a niche product to a mainstream energy source that provides a quarter of a million high-quality jobs. This is great news, but it’s only a fraction of what can be accomplished if we are truly committed to solving the climate crisis and expanding the use of solar and storage. It’s past time for us to unite as a nation and create even more jobs by harnessing the power of the sun.”
Indeed, it will take millions of workers in solar, wind, geothermal, and other clean energy fields to make the transformation away from the burning of fossil fuels that are cooking the planet now.