{"id":3464,"date":"2013-05-17T11:02:17","date_gmt":"2013-05-17T15:02:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=3464"},"modified":"2013-05-17T11:12:52","modified_gmt":"2013-05-17T15:12:52","slug":"georgia-missing-out-on-solar-jobs-behind-new-jersey-and-michigan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2013\/05\/georgia-missing-out-on-solar-jobs-behind-new-jersey-and-michigan.html","title":{"rendered":"Georgia missing out on solar jobs behind New Jersey and Michigan"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nOther states, even New Jersey and far-north Michigan,\r\nare beating Georgia to solar jobs.\r\nWhy isn’t sunny Georgia leading in one of the fastest-growing industries in the country that is deploying rural jobs everywhere else?\r\nHint: who’s\r\n\r\nholding a shareholder meeting this month<\/a>?\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nCarin Hall wrote for energydigital 13 May 2013,\r\n\r\nSolar Jobs Outnumber Texas Ranchers and US Coal Miners:\r\nNew statistics show that solar is one of the fastest growing industries in the US, creating thousands of jobs across the country<\/a>\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

\r\nThere are now more solar energy workers in the state of Texas than\r\nthere are ranchers, according to solar research group The Solar\r\nFoundation.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nThe group’s data mapping out solar jobs across the nation also\r\nshowed that there are more solar jobs in California than actors, and\r\nmore solar workers than coal miners nationwide. Sunny states like\r\nCalifornia and Arizona topped the list. Wyoming came in last, with\r\njust 50 workers, while Utah showed a mere 290 solar workers despite\r\nbeing one of the country’s sunniest states.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nEven the states with less sunshine like New Jersey and Michigan\r\nshowed a high number of solar jobs—thanks to favorable tax and\r\nregulatory policies that help attract developers to cope with high\r\nelectricity prices.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\n<\/a>\r\nNew Jersey is #9 and Michigan is #15 according to\r\n\r\nThe Solar Foundation’s map of State Solar Jobs<\/a>.\r\nWhere’s Georgia?\r\nNumber 41 in solar jobs per capita.\r\nYet Michigan is #47 by maximum solar resource and New Jersey is #36,\r\nwhile Georgia is #18: much sunnier than those northern states.\r\nWhy is Georgia so far behind?\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\nLEGAL STATUS OF THIRD-PARTY OWNERSHIP: NOT ALLOWED\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nBecause of\r\n\r\nGeorgia’s 1973 Territorial Electric Service Act<\/a>.\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nThat’s why\r\n\r\nthe half a billion dollars Goldman Sachs made available to SolarCity<\/a>\r\nwon’t bring any of those 110 MW to Georgia or any of those jobs.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nNET METERING POLICY GRADE: F\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nCalifornia uses net metering\r\n\r\nfor more megawatts and jobs<\/a>, but you can’t get that in Georgia.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nINTERCONNECTION POLICY GRADE: N\/A\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nWell, Georgia does require your (one and only pre-determined for you\r\nby that 1973 law) electric utility to interconnect your solar installation\r\nand to buy your excess power.\r\nHowever, the utility sets the price it will pay you, often at their\r\nidea of an avoided power generation rate (what they would have to pay\r\nto generate the same amount of power), and that of course is much lower than\r\nyou pay them.\r\nAnd you can’t install a system bigger than\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n\r\n10 KW for residential or 100 KW for business<\/a>.\r\nSB 51<\/a> would have fixed that last,\r\nbut it didn’t pass.\r\nPlus Georgia’s idea of “net metering” is not the same as California’s idea.\r\nIn Georgia you get two meter registers: one for what you pay the power company,\r\nand one for what they pay you, settled up at the end of the month.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/a>\r\n\r\n

\r\nRENEWABLE PORTFOLIO STANDARD (RPS) TARGET: N\/A\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nRenewable Portfolio Standard (RPS)?\r\n\r\nHB 503<\/a> would have done that, but it didn’t pass.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n<\/a>\r\nRPS SOLAR CARVE-OUT TARGET: N\/A\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nSee RPS.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nWhat’s Georgia missing out on because of its backward laws and policies?\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nThe study also showed that almost half of solar jobs involve\r\ninstalling solar panels, paying around $18 and hour ($38,000 a\r\nyear), which is higher than the median national wage of $34,750,\r\naccording to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nThat’s $18\/hour jobs we could have in rural Georgia,\r\nwhere we need them most,\r\nalso reducing the ridiculous $200\/month and up electric bills\r\nmany poor south Georgia rural residents pay.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nWhat’s holding us back?\r\n\r\nGeorgia Power and Southern Company<\/a>.\r\nAs Georgia Power CEO Paul Bowers put it:\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

\r\nRenewable (energy sources are) going to have a sliver.\r\nIs it going to be 2 or 4 percent? That\u2019s yet to be determined. \r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nThat’s right, while states far to the north of us with much less sun\r\nreap solar jobs and\r\n\r\nsolar rapidly outgrows every other power source<\/a>,\r\nGeorgia Power and its parent the Southern Company\r\n\r\naren’t even trying to play in the Super Bowl of distributed energy<\/a>.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\nHow can they get away with that?\r\nIsn’t Georgia Power a regulated public utility?\r\nSure, in\r\n\r\nthe most corrupt state in the country, number 50 out of 50<\/a>.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nWhy does Georgia get an integrity grade of F?\r\nWell, which companies would have an interest in blocking bills like\r\nHB 503 and SB 51 so they can keep raking in profits\r\n\r\non boondoggles like the 19-month-late and billion-dollars-over-budget Plant Vogtle nukes<\/a>?\r\nCould it be Georgia Power and the Southern Company?\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nMaybe you’d like to give the Southern Company a piece of your mind about that.\r\nYou don’t even have to attend the 22 May stockholder meeting.\r\nYou can\r\n\r\nsend SO CEO Thomas A. Fanning a message online the Sierra Club way<\/a>.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Other states, even New Jersey and far-north Michigan, are beating Georgia to solar jobs. Why isn’t sunny Georgia leading in one of the fastest-growing industries in the country that is deploying rural jobs everywhere else? Hint: who’s holding a shareholder meeting this month? Carin Hall wrote for energydigital 13 May 2013, Solar Jobs Outnumber Texas […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[202,216,14,70,8,18,23,24],"tags":[2861,8750,339,8753,1153,8704,8701,8708,4313,6309,6311,847,8702,12,7,1603,33,839,8713,6310,145,42,8714,108,971,6],"class_list":["post-3464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-agriculture","category-coal","category-economy","category-ethics","category-georgia","category-georgia-power","category-renewable-energy","category-solar","tag-net-metering","tag-agriculture","tag-california","tag-coal","tag-corruption","tag-economy","tag-georgia","tag-georgia-power","tag-installation","tag-integrity","tag-interconnectivity","tag-jobs","tag-lake","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-michigan","tag-new-jersey","tag-poverty","tag-renewable-energy","tag-renewable-portfolio-standards","tag-rps","tag-rural","tag-solar","tag-southern-company","tag-territorial-electric-service-act","tag-valdosta"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-TS","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3464"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3464\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3475,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3464\/revisions\/3475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}