Alternative energy powers up new jobs
Rising demand for solar, wind, biofuels brightens outlook for manufacturing in U.S.
By Steven Mufson
THE WASHINGTON POST
Sunday, November 26, 2006
WASHINGTON — The top of a large steel vat gently swings open, and a slab of silicon, cut into pieces the size of bricks, is lifted onto a conveyor belt.
On a mezzanine above the floor of the factory in Frederick, Md., Bill Good is monitoring the 6-foot furnaces that melt the silicon that goes into bricks, which are later sliced into wafers and turned into solar panels in a building next door.
Good used to work in a landscaping business, but like many people across the country, Good has found work in the alternative-energy industry.
After two years, he said, "I could retire here."
That's the sort of job certainty many workers would envy. Growth in the solar, wind power and biofuel sectors has been fast and promises to be enduring.
Recently, BP PLC's solar division announced a $70 million plan to double the capacity of the Frederick factory and hire 70 more people.
"The demand for solar energy is so strong, not only in the United States but around the world, that we have to keep up," said Lee Edwards, chief executive of BP Solar.
Many boosters of solar, wind and biofuels have tried to sell them as pieces of a new American economy, but these nascent industries rely on many of the same skills and materials as the old economy — and that's good for people looking for jobs.
In Round Rock, TECO-Westinghouse Motor Co. plans to hire between 100 and 150 people over the next few years for a new initiative to build wind turbines at a plant where it already builds motors and generators.
The State of Texas is competing for a federal wind power research and testing facility, seeing alternative energy as part of its economic future.
The wind turbines installed by Madison Gas and Electric Co. in Wisconsin were placed on steel towers that were built in Shreveport, La.
Wind turbines also use components common in many endangered U.S. industries, such as gear boxes, rotors, control systems, disc brakes, yaw motors and drives, and bearings.
"What we need are policies that advance the climate for investment in these products," says Marco Trbovich, communications director for the United Steelworkers of America.
The ethanol sector has been adding jobs, too. In August, U.S. refineries produced 27 percent more ethanol than a year earlier, and 48 distilleries are under construction.
Meanwhile, the solar industry has about 20,000 jobs nationwide, said Rhone Resch, president of the Solar Energy Industries Association. That's a small number, but Resch said it is growing by 35 percent a year.
Expansions such as BP's add another reason, along with environmental concerns and national security, for the boosters of solar, wind power and biofuels to use in pleading for more government support in the form of purchases, targets, import limits, subsidies and tax breaks for alternative energy.
Many governors and mayors are realizing that fostering renewable energy can be good for their states and cities.
Under Gov. Edward Rendell, Pennsylvania has become a major purchaser of green energy.
In March, after receiving financing from the state and assurances from Rendell, Spanish wind power company Gamesa Energy said it would invest $34 million to manufacture towers and blades for wind turbines in Fairless Hills, Pa., which was hit hard by the closing of the last U.S. Steel Corp. facilities there in 2001. Gamesa said it expected to create 530 jobs.
"You're producing high-quality manufacturing jobs when others are moving out of the United States," Resch said. "If you look at the next high-tech growth industry in the United States, it can and should be solar energy."
Jigar Shah, 32, started a solar installation and financing company, Sun Edison LLC, in the basement of his Washington home in 2003. Now he employs 150 people.
Shah gets stores and factories to let him buy, install and maintain solar panels on their roofs and gives them 10- to 20-year contracts for energy with set prices. That way, companies don't need to make the initial investment for the panels, whose payback periods can be long.
One of Sun Edison's first customers was a Whole Foods Market Inc. store in Edgewater, N.J. With backing from Goldman Sachs & Co., Shah bought solar panels and installed them on the store's roof.
Sun Edison retained a small stake in the system, and Goldman Sachs owns the rest. Whole Foods got a contract for energy that rises a modest 2 percent or so a year for more than a decade.
The Whole Foods store's electricity now costs about 20 percent less than that sold by the local utility.
If utilities start charging customers more for electricity during peak-usage periods — around midday and early afternoon, when solar power is most available — the solar business could get another boost.
BP acquired a half-interest in the Frederick plant when it bought Amoco Corp. in 1999; it bought the rest from Enron Corp. Now it has about 15 percent of the U.S. solar market, BP's Edwards said.
As he spoke in the plant's control room, silicon wafers in another part of the plant were being cleaned, polished, stamped with silver wires, backed with aluminum, hooked together and placed under protective glass. To check their durability, some panels were tested in machines that simulate harsh weather: extreme cold or heat, high humidity and one-inch hailstones traveling at 52 mph.
If they last as long as planned, solar panels might become competitive without government subsidies.
Edwards said that every time industry capacity doubles, the cost of panels falls about 20 percent. Capacity has doubled over the past three years, but costs haven't dropped as much as expected because of a silicon shortage. Eventually, though, he said that "if we can keep driving costs lower, we will reach a point where solar is the same price as grid power."
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