The passage of the 2022 US Inflation Reduction Act has generated a multi-billion dollar investment spree in renewable energy installation projects: solar panels, wind farms, batteries…
A good part of these are in specialized installations managed by energy companies, part of an unprecedented revolution fueled mainly by the huge cost differential of solar generation, but a significant percentage are households installing a few panels and a battery, growing 33% on last year, which bring substantial reductions to energy bills, especially when we factor in the elimination of gas or gasoline. The feeling, and I know that from my own experience, is like going from scarcity to abundance overnight.
Having disproved disinformation that the planet lacks the resources to bring about a change in our energy model, solar panels are everywhere: on roofs and windows, yes, but also on the surface of lakes and reservoirs, canals, in schools, in parking lots, on agricultural land, and in countless other places, even changing the geopolitical dynamics of energy supply.
But of course, so much investment — and so much evidence of the benefits of the energy transition — doesn’t prevent a very obvious problem from arising: the availability of workers to carry out so many installations. At this point, given the need to electrify everything, if someone really wants a profession with a future, they should seriously think about becoming an electrician. In the United States alone, it is estimated that the solar industry will grow from 230,000 to 400,000 employees during this decade, and will reach 900,000 by 2035. If we add the installation of heat pumps, it appears that electricians are the only jobs growing in a construction sector in sharp decline.
The green transition will impact US labor statistics to the tune of some 25 million jobs over the next 15 years. For workers in the oil industry, a good reason to leave. European startups dedicated to the installation of solar energy in the residential environment have captured more than €500 million in state subsidies through 2022, and there is now a huge shortage of workers able to carry out the work, producing a bottleneck in a fast-expanding market.
We are now moving beyond the planning stage: if solar is the cheapest energy and requires only a relatively small initial investment that lasts around 25 years with no appreciable deterioration in performance, our long-awaited and much-needed energy transition is simply a matter of time… and logic.
(En español, aquí)
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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.
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