Pittsburgh Post Gazette- Justin Merriman
Salina Zito from the Pittsburgh Post Gazette was my source.
Remember when they told the coal regions that wind and solar was the answer? Well Trump wasn’t totally opposed to wind and solar and that’s why he put tariffs on China. China went and formed companies in other countries to get around those tariffs. Trump included them also.
Joe would have none of that. So last week he took care of his BBF. China.
On the same day Mr. Biden lifted the tariffs, he also announced he was going to use wartime powers granted under the Defense Production Act to ramp up solar equipment production to speed up American-made clean energy manufacturing.
That’s the other rub: We don’t make solar panels in this country. 315 projects were to be cancelled or delayed, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association, the industry’s top trade organization.
“The capability to manufacture the amount that you’re going to need, well that’s going to take probably over a decade,” Tom Rumsey, senior vice president of Competitive Power Ventures, the developer behind Maple Hill. Maple Hill is a unfinished project in coal country. The pitch to the people of Cambria County when the Maple Hill Solar Farm was first announced two years ago was that the $200 million project would create 150 megawatts of electricity while eliminating 150,000 tons of carbon emissions that fossil fuel plants would have emitted — and that it would employ 250 workers at peak construction. Two years and the picture for this article shows the progress. And those high paying jobs that will replace coal jobs? This from the Union.
Shawn Steffee, the business agent for the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers Local 154, said the jobs available for this solar farm are a slap in the face — and won’t help the power plant workers who lost their jobs. “We were told these jobs were going to be family-sustaining jobs. Well, $16 an hour is not a family-sustaining wage,” Mr. Steffee said, shaking his head. “I honestly don’t know anyone who has gotten a green energy job.”
But what happens after the job is completed? Mr. Rumsey said you’ll never hear his company talk green jobs: “That’s a political statement. We never say ‘green jobs.’ Why? Because it takes a day and a half to put up a wind turbine and once you construct the solar projects — and there are construction jobs there, for sure — but once they’re constructed, that’s it. There’s no operating jobs. There’s nothing,” he said honestly.
This is what they closed the coal plant for. So who’s the sucker?
But what happens after the job is completed? Mr. Rumsey said you’ll never hear his company talk green jobs: “That’s a political statement. We never say ‘green jobs.’ Why? Because it takes a day and a half to put up a wind turbine and once you construct the solar projects — and there are construction jobs there, for sure — but once they’re constructed, that’s it. There’s no operating jobs. There’s nothing,” he said honestly.
Exactly what I suspected all along.