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Updated 15 hours ago
The White House website may not mention it as part of President Trump's “America First Energy Plan,” but the solar industry continues to post dramatic job growth numbers.
According to an annual report by the nonprofit Solar Foundation, more than 51,000 solar-industry jobs were added in 2016, a 24.5 percent increase over 2015. Overall, the foundation finds, about 260,000 Americans work in the solar industry.
“Jobs have nearly tripled since we first started tracking them in 2010, and this is the fourth consecutive year that the solar industry increased its jobs number by 20 percent or more,” said Andrea Luecke, president and executive director of the Solar Foundation. “These are well-paying, family-sustaining jobs with low barriers to entry.”
The latest job numbers are as of November 2016 and are compared with November 2015. The biggest share of jobs — more than half — are in the installation of solar panels, especially for residential uses but also in larger arrays. In other words, the growth in part reflects the fact that more families and businesses are turning to solar.
The rising 2016 numbers were partly due to an expected lapse of the solar investment tax credit at the end of the year; many projects were slated to be completed before that occurred. But then the credit was extended and will now phase down between 2019 and 2022.
Last year is also expected to have seen the largest total increase on record in solar electricity generating capacity — about 14 billion watts of added capacity were forecast, although the final numbers are not in yet.
The report calculates that in terms of jobs, solar is now the second-largest energy industry, behind only oil and petroleum and considerably larger than coal.
The biggest state for jobs by far is California, which has more than 100,000 of them, but solar jobs generally grew in states across the country. In Indiana, they nearly doubled, from 1,567 to 2,700, in 2016.
Other states that experienced big growth included Louisiana, Michigan, Texas and Utah.
“Every single one of the states that voted for Trump, with the exception of Tennessee, had growth, and all battleground states, they all added substantially,” Luecke said. “We're seeing solar jobs everywhere.”
The industry's growth is not expected to be as fast in 2017 — more like 10 percent. One reason may be that the industry will be losing some of its Obama-era exuberance and figuring out how to shift into the Trump years.
The survey was “administered right after the election, so a lot of people were also cautious,” Luecke said.
Solar stocks plunged the day after Trump's election.
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