Utility Dive
Summary
Unemployment data indicates that around 600,000 people working in clean energy lost their jobs in March and April alone, Bob Keefe, executive director of Environmental Entrepreneurs (E2), told Utility Dive. But "these aren't jobs that have disappeared. These are jobs that are still there — we just need to get them back to work."
After the 2008 recession, the U.S. invested around $90 billion in clean energy, resulting in around 100,000 projects across the country and putting thousands of construction workers back on the job, according to Keefe.
"History shows us that clean energy is the best way to restart our economy," he said.
Most policy proposals for near-complete decarbonization target a 2050 deadline, according to the Berkeley report, but the falling costs of solar, wind and battery storage makes a 90% carbon-free grid by 2035 feasible.
Achieving that target will require retiring all coal plants by 2035 without building more fossil fuel plants, retaining existing hydropower and nuclear capacity, and reducing generation from natural gas plants to 10% of total annual electricity generation.
Within that mix, renewables and battery storage will provide 70% of annual generation, while hydropower and nuclear will provide another 20%. This portfolio will reduce wholesale electricity costs by about 10% by 2035, and avoid $1.2 trillion in environmental and health-related damages — including 85,000 premature deaths — through the middle of the century, the report's authors say.
And as the U.S. faces the prospect of recovering from the economic turmoil caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, this scenario would support 500,000 more jobs per year compared to a business-as-usual scenario.
"Everybody's asking what we can do to speed the recovery," David Wooley, professor at the UC Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy and co-author of the report, told Utility Dive. "And we think this strategy is very effective because of the large number of jobs it produces with no adverse impact on consumer costs, and very low costs in terms of government."
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