Clean energy sector job numbers in a new report analyzing last month’s U.S. Department of Labor statistics are foreboding: Only 3,200 workers returned to their jobs in energy efficiency, renewables, clean vehicles and fuels, and grid and storage.
This amounts to just 0.1 percent employment growth for July, which means more than 500,000 workers in clean energy industries remain jobless. Since the beginning of the pandemic, 15 percent of the sector’s workforce has filed for unemployment.
There had previously been cause for optimism. In June, the clean energy sector appeared to be recovering from the economic downturn with a surge of 106,000 jobs added as the country attempted to reopen. But spikes in new COVID-19 cases in areas around the country combined with dwindling Paycheck Protection Protection funds apparently stunted the growth.
Now, with Congress stalled on new stimulus talks, the clean energy sector’s short-term problems appear to be settling in for the long term. We are clearly at a tipping point; as we wrote a few weeks ago, permanent damage may be done and opportunities lost forever if our leaders do not act soon to rescue an industry that had been one of the most reliable job creators.
“While the rest of the world is doubling down on clean energy to jump-start their economies, our country’s leaders are sitting around watching these jobs disappear,” explained Bob Keefe, Executive Director of E2, one of the sponsors of the jobs analysis.
In April, we recommended five specific actions lawmakers could take, including direct pay for the Investment Tax Credit (ITC) and Production Tax Credit (PTC), adjusting deadlines for “safe harbor” provisions, enacting permitting reforms, and providing additional funding for new research and development and infrastructure.
“What is needed most right now is temporary refundability of renewable tax credits so projects can continue to move forward despite an increasingly constrained tax equity market, and a delay in the scheduled phasedown of existing tax credits,” said Gregory Wetstone, President and CEO of the American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE), another voice behind the report.
In a separate report released last month, E2 and E4TheFuture claimed a reasonable but robust investment in clean energy through existing, funding-approved federal programs, more than 860,000 jobs and $330 billion in economic activity could be generated.
We can recapture the clean energy sector’s previous momentum, save the jobs lost to the pandemic, and help rebuild the American economy with new growth — but there is little time left to waste.