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Comment by twoodfin | Hacker News Reader

A reminder as always that the ideal number of jobs (i.e. labor cost) needed to produce adequate energy to meet consumption demand is 0.

Yeah, yeah, this is startup cost in many cases. But jobs are not (or shouldn't be) the goal of an energy policy.

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I know several people building startups around green energy labor. The impression I get is that the labor demand isn't a policy thing, that solar installers in particular are desperate for more labor and turning down projects that they can't staff.

So I think this is a good thing! It takes labor to build infrastructure, it's not make-work. And a strong demand for skilled labor creates a lot of positive externalities.

Yeah but if one of the biggest political obstacles is "what about the jobs" then it makes sense to talk about the renewables jobs.

Why should energy, unlike any other service or industry, require no labor to provide

I may have misunderstood, but I think GP's point is that the ideal number of jobs for any productive endeavor is zero, i.e. "fully automated luxury gay space communism". If technology advances to the point where it's the equivalent of waving a magic wand to get energy, food, and resources, that's the ideal state.

Even in other scenarios e.g. ""semi-automated exploitative capitalism", as CEO, if I can replace expensive human workers with cheaper automated systems, I have reduced costs and the board and shareholders will like it.

I think that grandparent's point is that the ideal "limiting case" of this trend is zero human workers. Ideals are not necessarily attainable, but they point the direction of travel. Optimising for "more jobs, more payroll" is not what does or should happen.

_edit_ other commenters have pointed out that "clean power makes jobs!" is a political not economic or business reply to "what about the coal jobs?". And if it's true (as seems likely), then it's a stronger statement: "despite efficiency, this is a jobs growth area".

If the clean energy sector could be cheaply 100% automated, it would be done for business reasons, leaving the politicians to deal with the fallout of unemployed voters. But then, exactly the same is true of coal energy. Or anything else, really. Aren't there a lot fewer jobs assembling cars now than there used to be? Why is the "rust belt" called that?

As a CEO of any service or industry, why should I aspire to a higher expenditure on wages?

Because people are really, really expensive to employ. The fewer people it takes to generate 1 kW of energy, the cheaper that energy can be sold on the market, and to a first-order approximation, economic growth and increase in standard of living are mostly because energy got cheaper (and these things stop happening when energy stops getting cheaper). Note that for most other goods, it's uncontroversial that the reason people can afford it now, thus bettering their standard of living, is that it takes fewer people to make them than it used to (because of automation).

So... you're saying "People don't like spending money."

Oh, you don't say? Gee, what a worthwhile comment.

Back to reality--

Energy is such a critical industry. And given the size of the USA, for example, the maintenance of energy infrastructure is never ending.

So, this argument the idea of "zero" is quite meaningless in the context of reality.

> But jobs are not (or shouldn't be) the goal of an energy policy.

No one is saying that.

There is a transition to wind and solar, this is an indication of that.

"Solar jobs increased in the largest number of counties of any electric power generation technology, growing in 74% of U.S. counties."

Can’t wait to have ten billion windmills breaking down every year that we need millions of windmill techs for, rather than just a handful of nuclear reactors that require extensive maintenance every 30 years.

If the solar panels and windmills and their technicians are cheaper to build and operate (safely) than the nuclear reactors, externalities included, then it seems like the market is making the right decision.

Yeah, maybe it's expensive to pay people to drive around and climb windmills, but it's nothing compared to waiting out the half-life of nuclear contamination of a major city.

Except it’s not expensive.

Unsolvable maintenance problems, like the leaky Vermont Yankee plant, can't be solved by adding more workers. Which is by your lights better?

Design issue. The DOE has enough manpower and resources to put their heads together and design a perfect reactor - one that could be built and function as expected.

They won’t get around to it while they waste time and resources with stop-gap solutions like wind and solar which don’t generate energy consistently or reliably.

Famously, fossil fuels require zero maintenance, being a magic energy source

Reality is wind today is far cheaper to both build, maintain and decommission than nuclear

The problem with wind is variable supply - especially in regional areas.

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