Wind Now Employs More People Than Coal

Green Wombat:

Here's a talking point in the green jobs debate: The wind industry now employs more people than coal mining in the United States.

Wind industry jobs jumped to 85,000 in 2008, a 70% increase from the previous year, according to a report released Tuesday from the American Wind Energy Association. In contrast, the coal industry employs about 81,000 workers. (Those figures are from a 2007 U.S. Department of Energy report but coal employment has remained steady in recent years though it's down by nearly 50% since 1986.) Wind industry employment includes 13,000 manufacturing jobs concentrated in regions of the country hard hit by the deindustrialization of the past two decades.

The big spike in wind jobs was a result of a record-setting 50% increase in installed wind capacity, with 8,358 megawatts coming online in 2008 (enough to power some 2 million homes). That's a third of the nation's total 25,170 megawatts of wind power generation. Wind farms generating more than 4,000 megawatts of electricity were completed in the last three months of 2008 alone.

Read the whole story: Green Wombat

Comments

[cayuse]

Sex in Nevada must be like the current electrical and water performance. Mass demand and no deliverance of their own. Poor performance.

Fill your deserts with Solar Panels you pay for, but keep your Windmills out of Washington and my back pocket.

[mergina]

Well, I live in THE WINDY CITY, you know, the town of Obama and Al Capone, and I do not see a wind mill ANYWHERE. Ain't dat a shame.

[cayuse]

Stiupid is what stupid does my grandma use to say. But then she was a Rockefellar

[Prole-NY]

Though it is only a projection, the '20% by 2030' report estimates 500,000 workers for a steady 300 GW of wind capacity. That figures out at about 1700 workers per GW instead of the actual 3,400 workers per GW there are during the time of rapidly increasing capacity in recent history.

[cayuse]

I live by the biggest built yet and they only employed 17 for a few months and now there is none, but the same worker are over there erecting some more so that must be 34 workers.

Unless they are turning the turbines with man power instead of wind

[Prole-NY]

As I have already written, I think that this article is poorly researched and misleading. Here is the Wind Energy Association Report I believe the article is based on:

http://www.awea.org/newsroom/releases/wind_energy_growth2008_27Jan09.html

It is worth reading. Here are some extracts:

"At year’s end, however, financing for new projects and orders for turbine components slowed to a trickle and layoffs began to hit the wind turbine manufacturing sector."

"We are already seeing layoffs in the area where wind’s promise is greatest for our economy: the wind power manufacturing sector. Quick action in the stimulus bill is vital to restore the industry’s momentum and create jobs as we help make our country more secure and leave a more stable climate for our children.”

Other than saying that there were 8,000 jobs in construction and 13,000 new jobs in manufacturing, there is no full breakdown of how the 85,000 jobs are distributed between new build and operationa and maintenanance. I'll try to get those figures - though the author of this article should make the effort to do some work instead of a slapdash rehash of other people's work.

As already mentioned, according to the US Dept of Labor there were an average of 127,000 (nearest thousand) workers at US coal mines in the last quarter of 2008. Therefore the main premise of this article is incorrect. Just sloppy. Sorry. The green movement deserves better than this soundbite journalism.

[ObamaSheeple]

"The green movement deserves better than this soundbite journalism."

Yes. It does. I hate embellishment, a.k.a lying to prove a point from any group, especially liberal ones because they should know better. It isn't fair perhaps, but we liberals have a brain and generally use it. Lying should not be the first resort to prove a point.

Thanks for your information and work.

[joeyfoto]

I have zero expertise in coal or wind energy production. What I do know is that this is not the time for partisan wrangling. This is a time to find out what works and fund that. this is a time to research ways to make wind generation cheaper and coal generation cleaner. This is the time to invest in energy options that we have to stop burning fossil fuels in order to boil water, for steam generators. This is the time to make a massive investment in clean renewable energy to kick our addiction to foreign oil. If we get NOTHING else from this stimulus package but massive clean, domestic energy generation and a digital grid to deliver it efficiently, we will have made an investment in future efficiency that will pay dividends for generations.

To make those determinations we need real numbers with comprehensive comparisons. We need to see from genuine experts where research has the best shot of increasing efficiencies and we need to invest hard and smart.

Other than that, I don't have an opinion.

[alvdh1]

Take that King Coal. I mean no malice to the coal miners. I hope you see the writing on the wall and get retrained for America's new energy source so that you can leave the mine and have many more years with your families and friends. There will be funds for training in the stimulus bill.

[Mort]

They should put turbines in the halls of Congress. We could power the whole country for nothing... at least for 3-4 days a week, several months a year.

[SonofLiberty1]

Some months ago, I found out that Spanish Wind Turbine producer Gamesa, was down the street practically. So I sent them a resume....

Never got a reply....

Not to long ago, I found out why....

They closed up their shop and moved to another county.

Some wind jobs huh?

[negogato]

there's proof right there for you.

[SailFree]

But is it efficient? Are not more people employed producing much less energy?

[plantguy]

Not fair to count the manufacturing jobs so lets count manufacturing if we where building coal plants! Not close!

[mamacat]

The coal plants have already been built. Wind is just getting off the ground. It can employ people in the construction phase for a long time to come, and then there will still be a need for maintenance and replacement parts. The wind is free, coal has to be paid for, and then there is a big cost to the environment.

I wonder how many people in the wind industry died from black lung disease, or in collapsed mines that were not up to code?

There are also a lot of people employed in the solar, geothermal, biogas, and ethanol industries.

[mjt218]

If you count all the manufacturing jobs associated with coal mining equipment, coal transportation equipment, and all the misc. pumps, motors, and other equipment replaced at coal plants every year this is not even a contest. Coal still employs more people than probably all other forms of energy combined.

[cayuse]

There was a TALL OAK TREE that loved a BABBLING BROOK which love the MOUNTAIN HIGH which loved the SKY ABOVE.

Then along came MAN to BURN the tall oak tree down and DAM the babbling brook and put WINDMILLS on the mountain high and put JET AIRPLANES in the sky above.

[Lemmy]

So coal produces 20 times more electricity than wind with less people. Yeah, coal really sucks.

[Prole-NY]

Not quite. This isn't a like-for-like comparison because a lot of the employment is in the ramping-up of turbine capacity. The author has also got the number of people in the coal industry wrong. All in all it is very difficult to tell. This article has not been very well researched.

[GuyRC]

Odd isn't it that electricity from coal isn't 20 times cheaper.

[Lemmy]

So if company A has 20 times more volume than company B, company A's costs should be 20 times less? Your lack of understanding of basic economics is sobering.

[negogato]

Facts or yelling?

[Prole-NY]

The amount of wind-generated energy is growing, but here are the numbers for October 2008:

Coal 152,925 GWh
Wind 4,164 GWh

Ratio 36.7 : 1

The currently installed power capacity is in a different ratio:

Coal 315 GW (assumed constant from 2007)
Wind 25 GW (source American Wind Energy Assoc)

Ratio 12.6 : 1

The 20 : 1 ratio comes from the installed capacity for 2007 quoted in the link given by NL207 lower down in the comments.

Source EIA unless otherwise stated.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/

[marlovian]

Does wind include members of Congress?

[NL207]

Gee ... in 2007 coal only produced about 20 times as much electricity as wind.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epat2p2.html

Each laborer invested in coal produces more than 20 times as much electricity as each laborer invested in wind power. A stunningly efficient use of scare resources.

No doubt the government should tax coal power an subsidize wind power. Losing economic propositions are a great way to burden the taxpayers of America. While we are at it, let's bail out a few more failed businesses and tax a few more into failure. If we are going to systematically destroy prosperity, government intyervetion is a great way to do it.

[Prole-NY]

The author has the number of coal mine workers wrong - it should be 127,000 not 81,000 - and the other workers aren't counted.

Presumably the number of wind workers includes the people building the plant. It might be better to compare the number of mine workers + number of coal-fired power station workers with the number of wind farm workers. That would show a very different picture. The article, as it stands, is misleading.

[topgunna]

Haha, great post. Pyramid construction put a lot of ancient Egyptians to work as well. Maybe congress should look into subsidizing that?

[mjt218]

You'd be surprised . . . The "shovel ready" infrastructure projects in states don't already have federal funding for a reason.

[plugger]

how many does wind employ off Hyannesport ?

[Prole-NY]

Something is slightly fishy about those numbers. MSHA reports for the last quarter of 2008 list about 127,000 workers at coal mines (employees plus contractors - there were about 81,000 employees in 2007 - that's probably where that number comes from). This does not include the people working in plant manufacture or power generation.