Inconvenient energy fact: It takes 79 solar workers to produce same amount of electric power as one coal worker

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To start, despite a huge workforce of almost 400,000 solar workers (about 20 percent of electric power payrolls in 2016), that sector produced an insignificant share, less than 1 percent, of the electric power generated in the United States last year (EIA data here). And that’s a lot of solar workers: about the same as the combined number of employees working at Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Apple, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, Pfizer, Ford Motor Company and Procter & Gamble.

In contrast, it took about the same number of natural gas workers (398,235) last year to produce more than one-third of U.S. electric power, or 37 times more electricity than solar’s minuscule share of 0.90 percent. And with only 160,000 coal workers (less than half the number of workers in either solar or gas), that sector produced nearly one-third (almost as much as gas) of U.S. electricity last year.

The graphic above helps to quantify the significant differences in electric power output per employee for coal, natural gas and solar workers. In 2016, the coal sector generated an average of 7,745 megawatt hours of electric power per worker, more than twice the 3,812 megawatt hours of electricity generated per natural gas worker, and 79 times more electric power per worker than the solar industry, which produced only 98 megawatt hours of electricity per worker. Therefore, to produce the same amount of electric power as just one coal worker would require two natural gas workers and an amazingly-high 79 solar workers.

Via AEI

2 thoughts on “Inconvenient energy fact: It takes 79 solar workers to produce same amount of electric power as one coal worker”

  1. Scott Dredge

    Good news if you’re a fan of employment like me as opposed to having the masses on the dole.

    1. That’s like saying we should have 79 people out digging holes with shovels instead of one guy with a backhoe.

      Or turning off stop lights and employing people to direct traffic at intersections.

      Is that really what you are arguing for?

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