Governors' Wind Energy Coalition

One of the big questions in the clean energy transition is whether the increasing number of jobs in renewables will have pay and benefits that match those being lost in fossil fuel industries.

The employment data, including a 3.5 percent increase in overall solar jobs, are part of the National Solar Jobs Census, released this week by the nonprofit Interstate Renewable Energy Council. The report lists 263,883 solar workers in the United States.

Residential solar, which is mostly rooftop systems, added about 9,500 jobs due to the rising popularity and availability of state and federal incentives. Utility-scale solar lost about 6,000 jobs due to concerns about new tariffs and difficulty obtaining parts.

Solar installation jobs, which are a large subset of overall solar jobs, help to show the diverging trends in residential and utility-scale. Residential solar had 55 percent of all solar installation jobs in 2022, up from 50 percent in 2021.

But I want to focus on labor issues.

In the solar industry, 10.5 percent of workers are represented by a union or covered by a project labor agreement that provides union-scale pay, which is an increase from 10.1 percent in 2021, the report said. This is less than the 11.3 percent of U.S. workers overall who are represented by a union.

The solar industry also has a tight labor market, with 44 percent of solar industry employers saying it was “very difficult” to find qualified workers, the highest in the decade-plus history of this report.

Last year, the average annual pay for a solar panel installer was $48,890, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

That amount is much less than some of the fossil fuel energy jobs that are going away. For example, the average annual pay was $92,250 for fossil fuel power plant operators, and it was $92,960 for construction trades workers in fossil fuel electricity generation.

In some ways these are unfair comparisons in pay because the skills involved are different and fossil fuel power plant workers tend to be older, which is one reason for the higher pay. But even with such caveats, it’s a problem when the jobs of the future pay a lot less than the jobs that are going away.

“There’s no economic reason at all that renewables shouldn’t pay just as much” as fossil fuels, said Kevin Pranis, marketing manager for the Laborers International Union office that covers Minnesota and North Dakota.

His union has members at utility-scale solar projects and at fossil fuel power plants.

He explained that the high pay in coal plants is a legacy of unionization and a desire of utility companies to get along with their local communities. The solar industry grew from a different business paradigm, with developers aiming to keep costs as low as possible, and with most of the jobs being in construction as opposed to operation of plants.

The solar industry has improved the way it treats workers, Pranis said, but he views this as a work in progress. In Minnesota and North Dakota, labor organizations have succeeded in getting solar developers to agree to hire more local construction workers as opposed to transporting crews of workers from other regions. And the pay, while not as high as union leaders would like, has been improving.

While pay level is important, it’s far from the only thing we should be paying attention to. I asked Joseph Kane, a fellow at The Brookings Institution who writes about infrastructure issues, what he views as the most important factors.

He said that the tracking of clean energy jobs and wages is too often like a “bean-counting exercise,” while some of the key factors are difficult to measure.

One of them is whether a job is teaching “a menu of skills that these workers are going to need and develop,” he said.

The Inflation Reduction Act includes standards that allow for developers to increase their tax credits by meeting targets for pay and by having apprenticeship programs. Several states have clean energy laws with similar provisions.

“The new IRA requirements are going to, I think, have a pretty substantial impact in many places,” Pranis. He’s seeing this play out already with projects in his area.

The combination of the IRA incentives and the growth of solar should drive demand in every region to have trained workers who are available to work on nearby projects. This would allow workers to gain the experience they need to command higher pay, and it would give stability to the workers’ families who can rely on a substantial and steady income.

I’ll be watching to see how this plays out, and whether the policymakers and companies behind the energy transition can fulfill the promise that this shift can be good for the climate at the same time that it’s good for workers.