Jobs: Fossil Fuels versus Clean Energy

Laser Talk

Question:  Won’t making fossil fuels more expensive kill jobs?

Answer:  Cutting fossil fuel emissions actually puts more people to work, at comparable wages, than business as usual. [1] Fossil fuel employment has been shrinking for years, mainly because of mechanization, not regulation. For example, in 1980, producing 100 tons of coal per hour required 52 miners; by 2015 that number dropped to 16. Even though more coal was being mined, coal mining lost 58 percent of its jobs between 1980 and 2015. [2]

In 2018, there were 2.4 million jobs in clean energy and energy efficiency, compared to half that many in fossil energy. [3] Even without a price on carbon, installers and service technicians for solar and wind are forecast to grow 11 to 13 times faster than the U.S. average. [4,5] Also, the vast majority of energy sector jobs, such as electricians, power plant operators, riggers, etc., are needed for both fossil and non-fossil energy. [6]

Our country will still need energy, whether it comes from low- or zero-carbon sources or from the old polluting sources of the past. Today, the energy technologies of the future create more well-paying jobs per energy dollar spent, and will continue to do so even as the new technologies mature. [7] Not only is renewable electricity already cost-competitive with fossil-generated power in many locations, [8,9] it provides 50 percent more jobs, at similar pay, for the same amount of energy. [10,11]

And it’s not just renewable energy jobs! A 2017 study of a carbon tax in British Columbia that returns most revenue to taxpayers [12] showed that, over a six-year period, job gains in labor-intensive sectors like health care outweighed job losses in energy-intensive sectors like air travel. There were more employment opportunities with the carbon tax than without it.

This page was last updated on 04/09/20 at 14:05 CDT.