Solar Employs More People In U.S. Electricity Generation Than Oil, Coal And Gas Combined

forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2017/01/25/u-s-solar-energy-employs-more-people-than-oil-coal-and-gas-combined-infographic/#135802802800

>2017
>using "meh jerbs" as an excuse for not supporting renewable energy

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Yet it doesn't even produce a fraction of the energy that even 1 of those 3 sources provide.

Yet its still no where near as efficient

Disposing of all machines in Agrar culture would also create jobs. Doesn't mean we should do it.

That just show just how innefficient and expensive solar really is.

China still makes the panels for cheaper.

This.

It's inefficient as fuck. This isn't something to be proud of. Solar is fucking shit. Only good for powering a fucking calculator.

>Solar Employs More People In U.S. Electricity Generation Than Oil, Coal And Gas Combined
What is the employment difference when the subsidized jobs are removed from the equation?

solar is sooooooo progressive

I'll bet if we came up with a new name for oars people would be all over this shit

something like hydro bio propulsion

>using "meh jerbs" as an excuse for not supporting renewable energy
Has anyone actually ever done that? I've never heard it, it's a retarded argument.

Renewable energy is fine, but its just not cost effective right now, that's the problem. I would expect to see more of it as the technology becomes better and it becomes more efficient.

WTF I HATE HAVING JOBS NOW!

Solar and wind both need magic batteries to be useful.
A magic battery is low cost, scaleable, safe, long lasting, low maintenance, high energy density.

However, any battery tech that make solar useful works as well or better with nuclear or coal fired plants. Saving power during the low demand at night and discharging during the day. Letting lower capacity power transmission lines meet a higher demand. You place the magic batteries into buildings within a city and have your grid work in part from the generators and in part from the battery.
Rather than having 100% of peak demand as generating capacity you have about 75%, with the balance made up by the batteries.

That said we have no technology that even remotely comes close to being a magic battery.

big oil won't allow it. The sun produces more energy everyday than our entire relationship with electricity spanning 150+ years. It'll be damn near or practically free if solar was allowed to be efficient. Seeing energy is one of the biggest sources of schlomo cash, yeah they aren't gonna just let go easily

employment =/= efficient or prosperous. For example, you can ban all farm machinery, and force farmers to hire people to harvest food by hand. You've increased employment, but only a retard would think you actually created prosperity by doing so.

Noo goyim! Stop finding alternative fountains of energy. Remember "drill baby drill".

Big news! If you replace shovels with spoons you have to hire more people. Take that unemployment!

>big oil won't allow it.
That's fucking bullshit and you're a retard if you believe it.

>MUH too expensive to employ people

1% still thinks it hasn't reached maximum astronomical cash cow bloat

>It's all a jewish conspiracy why solar panels fucking suck

Yes, if only exxon would remove the giant lampshade that they placed over the sun

as if "jobs" are an unlimited resource in the first place, lol

not saying youre wrong op, youre right, just hope what im saying is being understood correctly...

374 thousand people employed in a pyramid scheme is n9thing to be proud of

>WTF I HATE HAVING JOBS NOW!

do you also hate paying several times more for your power?

guess what would happen if 1 and 2 were not existent and gubermit subsidies would be canceled.

most solar calculators aren't even solar

So solar requires more busywork, but somehow it's more efficient?

Solar IS big oil m8

They shill for wind/solar to keep nuclear from putting them out of business

because they still haven't figured out how to run it with a fraction of the manpower, as coal/oil/gas have. but they will.
In any case, thorium is the only midterm energy source to go with

This.

It's a shame the left enjoys being useful idiots so much.

So it's extremely inefficient?

Yeah, we know. It doesn't even break even. It's not an energy source, it's an energy sink.

>thorium meme

>but they will
No amount of humans can stop the sunfrom going down

...

Explain how skepticism in a magical solution is "edgy"?

all human costs derived from mining the elements required, manufacturing, landscaping, installing, maintaining solar installations will be brought down as industry improves and automation kicks in
has happened with any other energy source, solar is just behind
it won't be enough
thermal accumulation, ironically, with molten salts, will also improve the downtimes
still won't be enough
we need too much energy, nuclear is the only way, and hydro the only solid renewable

>will be

hey just like the concorde, right? Supply and demand? Free market? Magic economies of scale?

Haha get your own opinions.

> magical
there you have it
untested, underdeveloped, true, but promising
> magical
means you're the cool edgy guy that
> I told you guys, thorium's a meme, we better stick with the same ol' shit

if that's your bluepill, what's the red one?

Thorium has been hyped like crazy, but we should be deploying it somewhere before we decide whether or not it's as magical as people say. As of right now, data points to your skepticism being without basis.

So where are your arguments for thorium? Not copy-pasted ones or ones you paraphrased?

Go on. Tell us how much it would cost to supplant our fossil fuel energy with thorium. You do have a cost-analysis, right? You do have timetables, right? You seem so certain that it's a solution, so how could you not unless you're just another blue pilled /r/futurology guzzling singularitarian atheist dolt?

Where do most the materials to even make panels come from?

>As of right now, data points to your skepticism being without basis.

And these data, they tell you costs and timelines?

poor countries with slave labor.

You are so ignorant. All of the energy that living things use on the earth comes from the sun.

Now thats progressive

This. Nuclear is literally the best form of energy production in the world.

The smallest, least efficient nuclear power plant in the US, the Calhoun Plant, actually produces more energy than the largest solar farm in the world, the SAS farm, at 11,496 MWH if ran at full potential annually, compared to SAS, which produces 3,600 annually. Even better, the Calhoun Plant runs at around 40% potential annually, which still makes it more efficient on energy production than solar.

Here + china

and fossil fuels will be there forever, I guess
and they'll reproduce faster as energy demand rises

If solar is that inefficient, wouldn't it just be better to get all those 300,000+ people and make them peddle a bike to generate electricity?

The last I heard a few years ago, they were asking for about $1 billion and up to 10 years to deliver a functional prototype, which is incredibly inexpensive and a relatively short time to wait. Obviously the sooner it happens, the sooner we'll be able to weigh the actual pros and cons rather than the hypothetical.

That's not the fucking point dude. Solar's advantage is that you don't have to have a fucking power plant.

Imagine an idealized world without fossil fuels, where all energy was produced by solar, wind or geothermal local to the needs of consumption. There would be no need for an electric grid. No need for greedy power utilities. The government should pay this by taxing the rich. Stop giving huge handouts to fossil fuel corporations and interfering in the free market- let renewables take over. Unfortunately, we don't have capitalism, but monopoly by Standard Oil and Saudi Arabia.

Nuclear is a bad, bad idea. In the short term, the benefits are enormous, but the they doom the rest of civilization to troubles down the road.

Nobody wins a climate war.

>That's not the fucking point dude. Solar's advantage is that you don't have to have a fucking power plant.
How are you going to produce enough power withotu a powerplant? Are the giant fields of photovoltaic, using orders of magnitude more space and water, not a powerplant?

Considering solar produces a small fraction of the overall electricity output, can it be said the legacy oil and coal operations are much more efficient?

>There would be no need for an electric grid

>and fossil fuels will be there forever, I guess
>and they'll reproduce faster as energy demand rises

No, they'll be gone in 20 years. That's why i want to see your cost analysis and time-line for construction so i can have hope for the future.

But if that's how you argue, then there's no hope of you knowing anything.

I wasn't asking about just a single worthless experimental reactor. i want to know how much it would cost and how long it would take to make 15 terawatts of thorium electrical capacity, to replace oil.

This post is ironic right? Do people really think this will work?

I disagree with this statement. Every building in the world should have either a green roof, or a solar power one (preferably a thermal one, for the combined energy-heat benefits), because it will help production and temperature in cities.

On the other hand, Solar will never be baseload power and Germany has shown the whole "yeah, we will just load balance with multiple sources :D" is retarded.

So, the fact solar power can't be the backbone of our production doesn't suddenly mean it not a great idea to use it massive, but it must be done in the correct way.

Application based design, niggas.

you realize that a houses roof has more than enough space to power even a more than moderate use of a power for a family? that guy is silly, youd still want a grid because it has other benefits, but no, you dont need giant fields of solar panels

>Thorium has been hyped like crazy, but we should be deploying it somewhere before we decide whether or not it's as magical as people say. As of right now, data points to your skepticism being without basis.
Like in the past?
Don't worry China is building a LFTR, I'm sure we can license their plans for a set cut of the electricity generated over the life time of the reactors.

For a tiny fraction of the subsidies wasted on wind and solar we could build a LFTR design, which would not only solve all our energy demand forever would also allow US companies to start refining and processing rare earth metals again.

Are you retarded? To make enough solar panels to efficiently power society, as it stands, would cover an area of land the size of New York State. And as population grows, as billions of people start to use more electricity, the size increases exponentially.

Not to mention nuclear is incredibly efficient, the most efficient of all energy generation types. You literally cannot do better than nuclear.

>Gets a little bit more sun/wind than anticipated
>Energy surge vaporizes every electrical appliance, leading to country wide blackouts.
>Anarchy ensues
Vs
>Demand for electricity decreases
>Boss man tells the workers to cut back on burning coal to compensate.
>Everything is fine.

>They shill for wind/solar to keep nuclear from putting them out of business
Nice talking out your ass there. Nuclear is getting killed by the low natural gas prices right now.

Government subsidies you mean.

>Requires more people
>Produces less energy

I live in Arizona, the state with the least amount of rain/snowfall in the United States. Even still, people who have solar panels have to clean them at least twice a month. The means climbing on top of the roof via a ladder and not actually touching the panels because they're insanely fucking hot. You have to use special equipment and spend ~2 hours cleaning them off.

In Arizona. Now imagine if that was the case in, say, Washington, Oregon, Hawaii, Maine, etc. It's simply not feasible.

So you won't need giant fields of them for factories/hospitals/other large consumers of electricity?

You realize that the tesla full solar roof costs 140,000 dollars, just for the roof, and that they are the only ones trying?

Wind isn't that much better either...

No buddy. Nuclear was killed because from 1977 to 2013 the government (read environmentalist Democrats) didn't approve a single new nuclear power plant, and since 2013 only two new ones have been built while 33 plants were shut down from 1977 until now.

Government's refusal to allow new plants and an excessive --- almost 5 years' worth --- amount of paperwork is what's preventing nuclear

Just demothball the IFR and use that. The designed worked. The recycling worked. The close loop worked.

Nigga, no. The average house uses 10500kwh per month, which is about 1000 sqr feet of average solar incidence at average efficiencies. Most houses aren't that big, much less have that much incidence.

This is part of why I support thermal solutions, which require less cleaning, than photovoltaic ones.

>to to university of washington
>they have south facing solar panels

Good. Nuclear gives us wastes that won't stop being radioactively deadly for for tens of thousands of years.

>b-b-b-b-b-uuuh muh reprocessing meme!

>all those jobs just to make a slight fraction of oil coal or gas
lmao

hmm, really make me think.

It's more profitable already once you discount the subsidies.

I'm not disagreeing with any of that exactly, though some of those plants had valid reasons to be shut down. All I was saying earlier is that fossils fuels are doing fine despite Nuclear power, and that is in fact Nuclear power which is facing challenges from the low cost of natural gas. Suppliers would rather spend some millions on a natural gas plant which can be set up fast and easy with relatively cheap natural gas supply instead of spending billions of dollars on a new plant and then dealing with the billions in regulations to comply with running it.
It;s Nuclear which is losing to natural gas, not the other way around as the person I replied to stated.

>let taxpayers pay for it

That is in no way a long term solution to our energy problems. We already support far too many niggers, we don't need solar nigger welfare too.

>It's more profitable already once you discount the subsidies.

>charge higher price
>its more profitble

Then why don't they get built anywhere there are no subsidies?

Shitheads like you who don't think of the future are the same shitheads that fucked over america by outsourcing jobs for quick returns of cash

Post tits or gtfo.

Toyota is going to introduce salt batteries.

Let's just get one reactor before tabulating how much it would cost to replace the entire energy sector.

REMINDER OIL IS THE ULTIMATE RENEWABLE FRACKING ENABLED US TO ACCESS THEM.

You do realize solar is way more efficient. You put it up on your roof and it generates electricity for 20,30+ years.

Coal and natural gas you have to keep refilling the power plant everyday cause it burns away the fuel. That is so inefficient.

Do it for nuclear, the best option.

At least you embrace your leaf, unlike so many of your shitposting countrymen.

people are short-sighted retards

Its NOT profitable at all to the homeowner

$28K for an average system installed?? And it only takes off like 75$ of your bill??

THat's not profitable or feasible at all!!

>not even trying

People this stupid legitimately need to be culled from society.

>Let's just get one reactor before tabulating how much it would cost to replace the entire energy sector.

Each finalized reactor should be about 90% the cost of the experimental reactor. How much did you say it output again? We can calculate it right now.

I am going to guess somewhere in the dozens of trillions. I've done back of the book calculations for normal nuclear reactors and got around 30 trillion dollars to replace 15 terawatts.

Since thorium is new and untested, there is not much hope it will be cheaper than uranium.

This is bait

actually I'm pretty sure people mistook my post, I meant that solar is more profitable than oil etc. when you discount the OIL subsidies.

>Toyota is going to introduce salt batteries.
That's nice but hey still cost vastly more than generation. If you could drop the price of a battery to double that of nuclear or coal you would have a product.

>You do realize solar is way more efficient
Physically capped at 30% efficiency, about the same as a gasoline engine. Google Shockley–Queisser.

>it generates electricity for 20,30+ years.
15, on average.

>Coal and natural gas you have to keep refilling the power plant everyday cause it burns away the fuel. That is so inefficient.
You have to clean and replace panels constantly as the heat, falling objects and temperature changes cracks and breaks them quite often.

Solar and solar gain more subsidies than every other form of energy COMBINED

>Most subsidized industry in history
>Burning away tax dollars just cuz muh renewable
>Claims it's sustainable

Look to thorium nuclear faggot. Or space elevator to put solar panels in space

>Physically capped at 30% efficiency,

Wrong. Efficiency improvements are made constantly. Solar panels are much more efficient than ones in the 70s

>15, on average.

No it's 90% of efficiency for 20 years, 80% thereafter, on average.

>You have to clean and replace panels constantly as the heat, falling objects and temperature changes cracks and breaks them quite often.

That's a lot easier than trying to clean the planet from coal.

and wind*