Is Clean Energy a Job Killer?
Though it’s categorically false, we hear constantly that clean energy and a vibrant economy are mutually exclusive. Here’s a short but terrific video that clarifies this nicely.
Though it’s categorically false, we hear constantly that clean energy and a vibrant economy are mutually exclusive. Here’s a short but terrific video that clarifies this nicely.
The bullets that follow require considerably more flesh than in this type of comment, but here are a few points.
It is extraordinarily uncommon to hire new employees because one can afford to do so. Regardless of the funding’s genesis, one hires in order to leverage that expense into an even greater income. If one can create that leverage through other means, that is always the road taken.
While it is sometimes the case that in any shift from one form of process to another there is an overlapping period wherein a cumulatively greater total cost is experienced (higher employment), it is usually the case that the long term costs (opex) will be less than where one started (lower employment).
The leverage created by modern technology is oft quoted in the move from the agrarian society to the industrial. That leverage is increasing at an exponential rate in virtually all activities. It takes fewer people to build a car than ever before in history, and so it is with all processes of the non-artistic variety.
There is no question that every wind turbine manufacturer in the world is devoting their research dollars to operational reliability,in part, to eliminate the supporting workforce. I used that simply as an example. This phenomenon is occurring in absolutely every endeavor wherein there exists the possibility of technical leverage.
Investment in a particular sector is often done at the expense of shorting an existing process. Fewer total dollars are spent on paradigm shifts than the business or popular press tends to portray.
The upshot to all of this, in a nutshell, is that it is highly unlikely that society is creating greater employment. The trend is one of ever decreasing the workforce commitment in favor of leveraging technology for increased profit. Whether it be coal mining or photovoltaics, business will attempt ever greater leverage and the correspondingly increased profitability.