Credit: Stanford Graduate School of Business
The red hot solar jobs market cooled off last year.
The solar industry shed nearly 10,000 jobs in 2017, a 4% drop from 2016, according to a report by the Solar Foundation, a nonprofit group that promotes solar energy. It’s the first time jobs have fallen since the group began tracking them in 2010.
More than 250,000 Americans worked in solar installation, manufacturing, sales and engineering last year. A slowdown in panel installations, which accounts for the biggest share of jobs in the industry, caused the decline.
That figure is still up from 90,000 in 2010. Installation jobs boomed in recent years because of a 30% federal renewable tax credit that was set to expire at the end of 2016.
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The tax credit was later extended, but companies had rushed to install panels before the credit was supposed to lapse. Then they pulled back in 2017.
Employers were also worried that the Trump administration would put high tariffs on […]
The powers that should not be can try to restrain solar growth, but they will not succeed long term. As storage density capacities rise, solar will begin to outpace and displace coal and natural gas even more than it has already.