This is an interesting article written by Joel Kotkin, an employee of Praxis Strategy Group. He makes the claim that not only new jobs, but higher quality jobs( in terms of salary), must come from traditional energy industries like mining,oil and natural gas. The reason behind this claim is that "green" energy like wind and solar, still costs much more to produce per kilowatt than natural gas( wind is twice as expensive, and solar three times as expensive).
We have all heard that "America must reduce its dependency on foreign oil", and most people associate this with a rise in green technology. However, green tech has not progressed enough to take over the majority of U.S energy needs. With the current unemployment rate so high, it looks like traditional energy jobs will play a role in boosting the economy. In fact, from 2006 till the present this sector of the economy created 500, 000 jobs, with the average job paying somewhere around $100,000.It will be interesting to see how much more growth comes from this sector and how that might help the economy recover.
The only concern is that this would be very short-term and that traditional energy jobs might be pretty volatile based on rising/falling oil prices. Investing in renewable energy in the long run might lead to a more stable influx of jobs.
ReplyDeleteCertainly traditional energy won't be the long term answer.However, I think the article was saying that traditional energy still has an important role to play until green technology can handle the burden of U.S energy demands.
ReplyDeleteThis might help in the short term but as long as it help produce jobs it should be good for now. The economy will take anything they can right now to recover.
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