Green economy a 'scam'? Don't tell US solar industry
Rumors of solar energy’s demise are, like Mark Twain’s premature obituaries, an exaggeration.
According to the latest figures from the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), for example, the US installed 314 megawatts of new solar photovoltaic (PV) capacity in the second quarter of 2011 — an increase of 69 percent over the same period last year. By the end of the year, new PV capacity for 2011 is expected to reach 1,750 megawatts. That’s twice as much as in 2010, and enough to power some 350,000 homes.
“The second quarter data illustrates that the US solar industry continues to be one of the fastest growing in America,” said Rhone Resch, president and CEO of the SEIA. “More than 100,000 Americans are employed in solar, twice as many as in 2009. They work at more than 5,000 companies — the vast majority being small businesses — across all 50 states.”
Most of that growth was concentrated in the utility and commercial markets, rather than the residential market. While installation of residential PV systems has dropped for two consecutive quarters now, the SEIA predicts those figures will improve later in 2011 and into 2012.
The news comes at a welcome time for the US solar energy, which has come under breathless political scrutiny by Republicans in the wake of the Solyndra bankruptcy. A California-based maker of thin-film solar panels and recipient of a $535 million loan guarantee from the US Department of Energy (DOE), Solyndra declared shut down and declared bankruptcy late this summer. The turn of events is prompting comments like “Are green jobs a scam?” and references to President Obama’s “$8 billion solar Betamax.”
Amid such careless declarations, it might be a good time to point to the SEIA’s figures. It also might be worth offering a bit of context: Tax breaks to the US oil industry, for example, are valued at around $4 billion a year. And earlier this summer, a former Pentagon official was quoted as saying the US spends $20.2 billion a year in Iraq and Afghanistan … on air conditioning alone.
