Many Cleantech Jobs Cannot Be Automated

A top management consultant once quipped, “The factory of the future will have only two employees: a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment.”  Now, as suggested here, this concept is subject to debate, and yes, it’s true that Elon Musk said recently that part of the reason for the delay in getting the Tesla Series 3 to market was that he had automated some processes that would have been better performed by human beings.

Yet it’s hard to get past the “man-dog” concept above.  After all, this is really what took down the coal industry in the U.S.  Sure, competition from natural gas and renewables were a big part of the mix, but automation was the main driver in the precipitous decline in coal jobs.

Of course, all this has us looking at jobs that cannot be automated, and here’s one of the places that cleantech jumps into mind, i.e., things like installing energy efficiency retrofits for buildings, constructing and operating vertical farms, and installing/maintaining solar, wind, run-of-river hydro, geothermal and biomass facilities.   Yet another reason that the U.S., as a nation, should be investing in this arena.