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Jobs in the clean energy industry are taking off, with jobs in this field growing at twice the rate as the overall job growth rate in all industries in the U.S., according to a new report by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).
The 2024 U.S. Energy and Employment Report (USEER) revealed that employment in the clean energy industry increased by 142,000 jobs last year, a rate of 4.2% growth. As Reuters reported, this is up from a 3.9% rate of growth in clean energy jobs in 2022.
By comparison, total job growth in the U.S. reached a rate of 2% for 2023, the report found.
“Zooming out even further, clean energy jobs grew at more than double the rate of the rest of the U.S. economy, and that growth was driven by the utilities and construction sectors in particular — think new jobs building renewable energy and upgrading our grid,” said Deputy Energy Secretary David Turk, as reported by The Hill.
According to the data, the highest number of total clean energy jobs are in California, followed by Texas, New York, Florida and Illinois.
But clean energy jobs are growing all over the country, and Idaho has shown promise with the fastest rate of new jobs in clean energy at a 7.7% increase. Clean energy job growth reached 6% in Texas and 5.9% in New Mexico.
Solar and wind have had high levels of job growth, according to the USEER. Solar job growth reached 5.3% last year, and the wind energy industry jobs increased by 4.5%.
The DOE has anticipated that electricity generation from clean energy sources will double by the end of the decade.
A separate report from U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) found that solar, wind and battery storage were increasing exponentially, with clean energy capacity even surpassing coal electricity generation capacity for the first 7 months of 2024.
But clean energy jobs are increasing across the board, not just in electricity generation. According to the DOE, all five USEER categories saw employment growth last year: electric power generation; energy efficiency; fuels; motor vehicles; and transmission, distribution and storage.
The energy sector overall added more than 250,000 jobs in 2023, with 56% of the jobs being in clean energy.
“We are now starting to see the job impacts of investments made through the infrastructure and inflation reduction laws — first in construction and as America builds more of these factories, we’ll see hundreds of thousands more,” U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said in a statement. “The data clearly show that clean energy means jobs — good jobs, union jobs, and jobs retained — in communities across the country as we race to dominate the global clean energy economy.”
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