Solar jobs are on the upswing, and while much of the attention has
focused on the picturesque sight of solar installers rambling over
rooftops, the market for “invisible” solar jobs is also getting hotter.
That includes employment in solar financing, marketing, software and a
whole raft of back office jobs that are needed to help accelerate the
mass adoption of solar energy.
The Energy Department has just one such accelerator program in the works, called Catalyst. CleanTechnica covered the launch of Catalyst
last year, and earlier this month we had a chance to catch up with Dr.
Lidija Sekaric, acting director of the Energy Department’s Solar Energy
Technologies Office during the program’s second round. We’re happy to
bring her insights about Catalyst to you in this exclusive interview.
Solar Jobs “As Fast As Possible”
For those of you new to the solar jobs topic, it’s helpful to recall
that until a few years ago employment in the solar field was hard to
come by. That was primarily because solar technology was expensive and
inaccessible to most energy users except for astronauts,
do-it-yourselfers, and perhaps a few odd members of the one percent.
More recently, lower solar costs have been pushing more employment
opportunities. However, the industry is still bumping up against a wall.
While the cost of solar modules is sinking, the aforementioned
invisible or “soft” costs remain stubbornly high, as Sekaric explains:
There has been very, very rapid cost
reduction that has happened in the hardware space, especially modules,
which used to be a very big fraction of the cost.
The learning rate [has been slower] in
the non-hardware space, that is sometimes called balance of system or
soft costs…Catalyst tries to solve exactly that tough problem. Now 70
percent of a system’s cost is non-hardware.
Catalyst is designed specifically to enable a kind of rapid-response
public support for innovative solutions, in comparison to conventional
government funding procedures that can be prohibitively long and
complicated for startups:
We try to follow the industry as it’s
developing…and try to help innovators at the right stage. One is that it
is an open innovation program, and so we take the ideas and from the
community of innovators and the second one is a very rapid scale-up and
selection of projects.
There are many different angles from which to attack soft costs, as Sekaric emphasizes:
Trying to do that as fast as possible and
in as many places as possible and as innovatively as possible is what
Catalyst tries to do.
As for how fast is fast, Catalyst is designed to attract innovators
and provide them with support to get from the stage of defining a
problem and conceiving a solution, all the way to generating a minimum
viable product they can pitch to investors, all within 90 days.
Solar Jobs From Big Thinkers
In its second round, Catalyst is seeking innovative business
solutions to drive down soft costs with the goal of helping to build a
software infrastructure for the solar industry that leverages automation
and data, with a focus on buildings. Part of the challenge is that many
talented people in those fields are being lured off by tech titans such
as Apple, Google, and Facebook. Catalyst attempts to lure innovators over to the solar side by
offering the chance to participate in a high profile national program,
and to have a direct collaborative impact on the quality of life as the
US transitions from a potentially catastrophic fossil economy to a more
sustainable model.
Sekaric also notes that in order to attract innovators, Catalyst does
not assign problems out. Instead, participants come in with their own
unique perspective on the obstacles to solar adoption. Sekaric explains
that the result is a wide net:
This set of [19] companies represents a really wide solutions to the problem of soft costs.
Some of them are trying to solve the
problem of accessing finance for solar development, some of them are
trying to lower the cost of customer acquisition. It’s a really, really
wide range of problems…each one of those problems is really important.
This set of companies is moving to the
next phase, in which they will be judged by a very distinguished set of
panelists that will be announced soon…We’re excited about all of them.
Relatedly, Sekaric points out that in the current field of 19
Catalyst finalists, many of the companies have a social benefit mission
focusing on community solar, revolving loans, and other new business
models that are designed to increase access to solar energy across more
income levels — and increased access means more solar jobs.
You can catch video pitches for all 19 solar products
on the Catalyst website. The companies will be working on their
prototypes until November 30 and then you can guess which ones will win a
share of $500,000 in additional funding to get their companies to the
next stage when they’re judged at the Energy Department’s “Demo Day”
event in Philadelphia on December 10.
Speaking Of Solar Jobs…
Speaking of solar jobs, the Energy Department is just one of several
major federal agencies that are supporting growth in the solar jobs
sector. In that regard we were very interested in that moment during
this week’s Republican presidential primary debate when US Senator Ted
Cruz promised that as President, his signature economic growth plan
involves abolishing the entire Energy Department along with several
other federal agencies. If that sounds a bit harsh, consider that a President Cruz would only
abolish the Energy Department once. The Commerce Department, in
contrast, would be abolished twice.
As for why the Energy Department should be abolished at all, Senator
Cruz did not make that clear during the debate. However, since he is on
record criticizing the Obama Administration for picking “energy winners and losers,”
it’s a good guess that he is no fan of the Energy Department’s support
for renewable energy in general, and solar energy in particular. In
terms of economic growth, the Energy Department is at best a useless
appendage, kind of like a national appendix or a sixth toe, and at worst
it is a significant obstacle.
Assuming that is the case, then we only fault Senator Cruz for not
being truly committed to his plan. He should not have stopped at the
Energy Department, or the Commerce Department (twice!), or the two other
agencies he singled out during the debate, those being the Internal
Revenue Service and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
For Senator Cruz’s plan to achieve the full force of effectiveness —
meaning an end to this business of picking energy winners and losers —
President Cruz should certainly abolish the Department of Agriculture,
which has been creating new solar jobs by funding solar projects in rural communities (the Agriculture Department’s funding initiatives for biogas recovery and biofuel production should also get the heave-ho).
Senator Cruz also inexplicably left the US Army out of his plan. Through its Office of Energy Initiatives and the Army Corps of Engineers,
the US Army has become one of the nation’s most important single
drivers of the domestic solar industry (and by extension, solar jobs)
through massive utility scale solar and rooftop solar projects at
domestic bases. That’s all in addition to the Army’s growing interest in
the off-base uses of solar energy. If Senator Cruz abolishes the Army, then to be fair he should also
abolish the Navy and the Air Force, both of which have been creating
solar jobs by investing in solar energy as well as biofuel and to a much
lesser extent, wind energy.
While we’re doing Senator Cruz this favor by filling in the blanks
that would cripple his economic plan before it even gets off the ground,
let’s not forget the US Marine Corps, which has been pushing the market
for portable, wearable and deployable solar energy. He should also do
something about the Defense Department’s Defense Advanced Projects
Research Agency, which is very interested in transformational solar R&D.
Taking a cue from Senator Cruz, let’s also go back and abolish the
Navy and the Air Force again. In addition to fostering the solar market
at the user end, both the Navy and the Air Force have become important
funders behind cutting-edge research for next-generation solar
technology that is taking place right now in universities and
laboratories all over the country.
Finally, according to Senator Cruz’s plan, it’s also time for the
National Science Foundation to go. The NSF was established in 1950 in
the aftermath of World War II, when policy makers realized that the US
had to keep its science chops burnished in order to keep up with the
rest of the developed nations. It has been supported by Republicans and
Democrats alike since then, but apparently this is yet another federal
agency that throws taxpayer dollars at game changing solar energy research leading to the creation of new solar jobs, so it really should get the old heave-ho.
http://cleantechnica.com/2015/11/12/new-invisible-solar-jobs-exposed-19-solar-startups/
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