10:29 am Green Around the Hills: State’s solar energy future looks bright
By Jennie Young
I happened across an article in the Jackson Sun (12/12/11) which I’m anxious to share. Our state has already made significant strides toward becoming a national and world leader in developing solar energy. We are at the cusp of a major opportunity to provide renewable energy and thousands of permanent jobs. We already rank 22nd in the amount of installed and operating photovoltaics.
According to the report released by the Tennessee Solar Institute, three major solar companies are already here. Sharp Electronics is operational in Memphis and two other major companies are building plants, Hemlock Semiconductor Corp. in Clarksville and Wacker Chemie AG near Cleveland. According to the article, the Volunteer State Solar Initiative, which includes the University of Tennessee and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has already been established. Two hundred organizations, 174 of them for-profit, are involved in solar energy in our state. More than 6,400 Tennesseans are currently employed by solar companies. That’s almost 17 times more than work in the coal industry in Tennessee. 17 times.
Middle Tennessee State University in early 2010 reported that six major green energy businesses will soon create more than 16,500 permanent jobs. Former governor Phil Bredesen started the ball rolling by recruiting the first companies and Gov. Haslam seems committed to promoting green energy as well. At the same time, powerful forces are at work to promote coal extraction in Tennessee’s Cumberlands with a process which is anything but clean. It involves exploding off our mountaintops, destroying watersheds, endangering wildlife, poisoning streams and rivers and threatening both the existence of mountain communities and the physical and emotional health of the inhabitants. If that weren’t bad enough, very few jobs (most temporary) are involved and as the operators are out of state few of the profits will remain in Tennessee.
We just have to look to the states north of us to see the pattern. I so appreciate having the information from the Tennessee Solar Institute about the number of jobs already provided by our fledgling solar plants. It gives a special perspective on MTR mining. During the 40 years since MTR gradually became the preferred access to coal, West Virginia’s coal industry jobs have fallen from around 150,000 to a shocking figure of less than 15,000 today, even with production now at its highest levels. Kentucky has seen a similar slide of 66 percent. Industry spokesmen and their political supporters are simply untruthful when they promote MTR as job producing. It’s designed not to be.
The special perspective is this. Our young solar industry already provides almost half as many permanent jobs as the long-established coal industry provides West Virginia today — with the promise of numbers expected to soon surpass coal’s offerings. We can be smart about this. We can insist on responsible, actual job producing access to our coal. We can at the same time work at continuing to become a global leader in those industries which make its use less and less imperative.
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