Solar jobs fall in 2017, according to report from Obama’s energy chief

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The solar industry lost 24,000 jobs last year, while coal and oil drilling jobs grew slightly or not at all, according to an energy jobs report released Wednesday.

Former Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz joined with state energy officials to release the U.S. Energy and Employment Report, which President Trump decided to scrap.

“Within this low-emission category, natural gas, wind, and combined heat and power (CHP) employment increased in 2017, while solar employment declined,” according to the report’s executive summary.

Solar energy companies employed 350,000 people, with more than 250,000 of them working mostly on solar, the report said.

Job losses in the solar industry represent a reduction of 6 percent, or 24,000 jobs, in 2017, with 9,000 of those losses in large utility-scale solar energy and 15,000 in residential rooftop energy.

Coal jobs stayed about the same at 92,000 in 2017, while oil and natural gas drilling jobs rose slightly. Jobs in the electricity sector were much better off in terms of job creation, with wind energy adding 107,000 new workers in 2017. Natural gas power plant jobs rose by more than 19,000.

Jobs producing corn ethanol rose by 6,000 jobs, or a 20 percent increase from 2016. Energy storage also added 6,000 jobs in 2017, rising 12 percent.

Overall, industries surveyed anticipate energy jobs to increase by at least 6.2 percent in 2018, with a jump of 9 percent predicted for jobs related to energy efficiency. Energy efficiency jobs are identified in the report as those associated with the Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star efficiency rating program for appliances, as well as the installation and manufacture of the products.

The U.S. Energy and Employment Report was implemented under Moniz’s watch when he was secretary of energy under former President Barack Obama. But the Energy Department under Trump decided to scrap the report this year.

Moniz’s think tank, the Energy Futures Initiative, joined with the National Association of State Energy Officials, representing governor-appointed state energy officers, to release the 2018 data. The 2018 report uses the same methodology employed by the Energy Department since the first report was issued in 2016.

Moniz and NASEO executive director David Terry released the report Wednesday in the Senate Visitor Center. They were joined by Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington state, the top Democrat on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

Moniz is scheduled to give the 2018 commencement speech at Georgetown University in Washington on Thursday, and is slated to receive an honorary degree of Doctor of Human Letters.

Moniz is a nuclear physicist with a doctorate in theoretical physics from Stanford University. He was on the senior faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he founded the MIT Energy Initiative. He has nine honorary doctorates, including three from European universities, according to the Nuclear Threat Initiative, where he serves as CEO.

Moniz was a key architect in negotiating the Iran nuclear deal under Obama.

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