Against the odds, The Coal Industry is starting to come back

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Coal is dying & will be gone in a couple of decades, atleast when it comes to power generation. Solar for one has still not matured & cost is expected to fall by 40-50% odd further the next few years. There are still many scale & efficiency increases (cost of material for panels is coming down, cost of installations & customer acquisition is coming down, new technology in panels are much more efficient etc ) will bring costs further down. Solar prices have crashed, gone down by 70-80% odd in the last few years.


http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/california_leads_the_way_in_solar_power_20170415

For the first time, on the day of March 23, 40 percent of Californian grid power between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. was generated by utility-scale solar plants. California has so much solar power now that sometimes the price of electricity turns negative. If you count in the electricity generated by rooftop solar panels, then on that day at that time, California was actually getting 50 percent of its electricity from solar.

Jobs in solar energy in California expanded by 67 percent year on year. California wants a third of its grid energy to come from renewables in only 3 years, in 2020. It wants the proportion to rise to 50 percent by 2030

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The second annual US Energy and Employment Report (USEER) from the US Department of Energy (DOE) showed that in 2016, solar energy employed more people than the traditional coal, gas, and oil combined.



http://www.iflscience.com/environment/solar-employs-more-people-than-oil-coal-and-gas-combined-in-the-us/

Major energy sources and percent shares of U.S. electricity generation at utility-scale facilities in 2016

Natural gas = 33.8%
Coal = 30.4%
Nuclear = 19.7%
Renewables = 14.9%
Hydropower = 6.5%
Wind = 5.6%
Biomass = 1.5%
Solar  = 0.9%
Geothermal = 0.4%

https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3


Coal, Natural Gas contribute more than 60% of the energy but provide less than 150K jobs. Solar does around 1% & has 373K jobs.

Can you imagine the amount of jobs created when in 10-15 years solar takes over from coal & natural gas ? This has to be the biggest employment opportunity that has ever come. No wonder China is massively investing in solar, they want to monopolize solar panel manufacture!

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How on earth does solar & wind not have more representation when the 2 combined give around 500K jobs? Why aren't there strong national unions for Solar Workers like say Nurses which was a huge bloc behind Bernie.

Solar could exert pressure on Republicans. There's huge jobs which are at stake & massive amount of money which could be saved. Forget Florida, look at what is happening with Lpuisiana, that state is getting destroyed. The GOP leaders must grow their senses !