I think most of the jobs that come with wind (and solar) are on the manufacturing and construction end, therefore subject to sales and finite. Gas generation has less of those type of jobs presently but employment at the generation plant level is more stable. Where jobs would see the sharpest decline is on the extraction end (ei via fracking, mining, etc).Griffon64 wrote:So gas power generation is a lot more labor intensive than wind farms, then? Else the "lost" jobs would migrate in some form to the replacement power generation method, won't it? ( The jobs further up the supply chain, eg. at the power grid level, would stay, since the power still flows through it. )SirDennis wrote:But there's the rub as moving away from gas power generation, jobs wo1uld also be lost (which is the last thing anyone wants).
Could those people shift to the component manufacture and construction areas of wind and solar? It would depend on the willingness to do those things in regions where people had been engaged in the other activity. Or for those people to move. Could they move under their own auspices; for instance would it be affordable to move to where the jobs are (ie the energy boom in Alberta was fine but who could afford to move there once real estate took off).
No, it all comes down to, as Voronwë indicates, in order for any positive shift to occur we would have to redo the entire economic system. For a start there would have to be some kind of transitional funding to keep people solvent and fed as the system was overhauled. The desire to do that is virtually non-existent in the minds of the governors.
The thing is fracking doesn't even produce that many jobs. There are murmurs that job creation predictions were exaggerated in order to be allowed to engage in what is known to be the highly destructive, wasteful, poisonous activity that is fracking.
ETA and ref to what Ax said at the bottom of page 1.