in Wyoming, there's a company called Goldwing America, and it created a free training program for wind farm technicians. it's aiming the program at coal miners having trouble finding work.
i call them alt-jobs.
A mine in PA just opened. Making America Great Again.
First New Coal Mine of Trump Era Opens in Pennsylvania
70 people? Does not even match the weekly increase in the number of people working in the solar industry.
Is this the same industry that has to strangle the coal industry with regulations to compete?
Low Costs of Solar Power & Wind Power Crush Coal, Crush Nuclear, & Beat Natural Gas
Solar and wind is now the same price or cheaper than new fossil fuel capacity in more than 30 countries,
the WEF reported in December (pdf). As prices for solar and wind power continue their precipitous fall, two-thirds of all nations will reach the point known as “grid parity” within a few years, even without subsidies. “Renewable energy has reached a tipping point,” Michael Drexler, who leads infrastructure and development investing at the WEF, said in a statement. “It is not only a commercially viable option, but an outright compelling investment opportunity with long-term, stable, inflation-protected returns.”
Those numbers are already translating into vast new acres of silicon and glass. In 2016, utilities added 9.5 gigawatts (GW) of photovoltaic capacity to the US grid, making solar the top fuel source for the first time in a calendar year, according to the
US Energy Information Administration’s estimates. The US added about 125 solar panels every minute in 2016, about double the pace last year,
reports the Solar Energy Industry Association.
The solar story is even more impressive after accounting for
new distributed solar on homes and business (rather than just those built for utilities), which pushed the total installed capacity to 11.2 GW.
In 2016, solar-panel energy finally became cheaper than fossil fuels. Just wait for 2017.
Looks like solar needs no help.