Friday, September 11, 2009 at 8:56:37 AM - by Danny Vo

In a rebuttal to all those naysayers like Samuel Sherradan, who charge that “green energy” jobs are more hype than hope, Massachusetts’ Energy and Environmental Affairs secretary Ian A. Bowles says that the state’s solar energy jobs took a nearly 100-percent jump between 2007 and 2008, with an equal increase predicted for this year.

Bowles released the numbers at the Cleantech Forum XXIII, a two-day event which opened on September 9 at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center.

The numbers, from 1,086 to 2,075 – in a state not known for its remarkable solar irradiance values or focus on solar energy – are surprising; or, as Bowles notes, “indicative of the health and welfare” of the local solar energy industry (a health that fossil-fuel advocates gainsay, presumably to protect their own turf).

Solar irradiance values in Massachusetts are 4.0. This compares poorly with 75 percent of the nation, where irradiance values range from 5.0 (the southeast and south central U.S.) to 6.0 and higher from western Texas through much of Wyoming and north to Oregon. From New Mexico to southern California, values approach 6.8.
Massachusetts currently produces 414 megawatts of solar energy from 47 systems ranging from a 1-kilowatt Schott array at Howden Farm in Sheffield to a 170-kilowatt Evergreen Solar roof-mounted system at 1600 Osgood St. in North Andover. In 2008, the Interstate Renewable Energy Council, or IREC, showed the state with a total installed capacity of 7.5 megawatts of photovoltaic installations. By comparison, California had 528.3 megawatts.

The 414 megawatts are a good start to Governor Deval Patrick’s promise to have 250 megawatts of installed solar capacity by 2017, and a nearly $1-million infusion in the form of grants for green jobs training (to the University of Mass. at Boston and Nuestras Raices in Holyoke, among others) nicely balances more solar energy with the installers needed to deliver it to the real world. The grants are from the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, which was formed as an outreach of the Green Jobs Act of 2008.

So when economists like IHS Global Insight’s Michael Lynch argue that solar energy jobs need a demand side (more solar energy) to make them an economic driver, the argument – in the face of Massachusetts’ solar statistics – seems picayune. Massachusetts is likely to supersede its own renewable energy goals well before 2017, at the current rate.

Analysts would do well to listen instead to experts like Matt C. Rogers, who – as a senior advisor to the U.S. Department of Energy’s ARRA (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, 2009) Implementation – notes that funding solar (or renewable) energy jobs is a down payment on the nation’s environmental future, and that investing in a new, “clean energy” economy is the only path to a sustainable future.