By Dick Jones
If you took all the coal miners in the United States and sat them in Beaver Stadium the place would be under half full.
There were about 53,000 people working in the coal business in the U.S. in August 2019. That includes not just miners but office workers, maintenance and other coal support personnel, according to a report by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
By contrast, there were 242,300 Americans working in solar energy alone in 2018, says the Solar Foundation.
Far from being a job-killer, as it is often described by fossil-fuel industry advocates, the renewable energy economy is and will continue to be a job creator.
Pennsylvania’s Solar Future Plan says that if 10 percent of the Commonwealth’s energy output comes from solar by 2030, it will mean between 60,000 and 100,000 new jobs here. “From installers to system designers, these solar jobs have median wages of $20-$38 per hour and will be available in rural, urban and suburban areas,” reads a report from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.
Read more at Centre Daily Times.