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Clean Energy Jobs in U.S. Are Growing at a Rate 2x as Fast as Overall Jobs: DOE Report

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02 Sep, 2024

This post was originally published on Eco Watch

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.”

The post Clean Energy Jobs in U.S. Are Growing at a Rate 2x as Fast as Overall Jobs: DOE Report appeared first on EcoWatch.

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ABB receives EPD status for gearless mill drive ring motor

ABB receives EPD status for gearless mill drive ring motor

ABB has gained Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) status for its Gearless Mill Drive (GMD) ring motor — technology used to drive large grinding mills in the mining industry.

An EPD is a standardised document that provides detailed information about the environmental impact of a product throughout its life cycle. Based on a comprehensive Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study, the EPD highlights ABB’s commitment to transparency, environmental responsibility and supporting customers in making informed decisions on sustainability in their supply chains.

ABB analysed the environmental impact of a ring motor across its entire life cycle from supply chain and production to usage and end-of-life disposal. The study was conducted for a ring motor of a semi-autogenous grinding (SAG) mill with an installed power of 24 MW and was based on a reference service life of 25 years.

“Sustainability is at the core of our purpose at ABB, influencing how we operate and innovate for customers,” said Andrea Quinta, Sustainability Specialist at ABB. “By earning the Environmental Product Declaration for our ring motor, we emphasise our environmental stewardship and industry leadership for this technology. We adhered to the highest standards throughout this process, as we do in the ABB Ring Motor factory every day. This recognition highlights to the mining industry what they are bringing into their own operations when they work with ABB.”

The comprehensive LCA was conducted at ABB’s factory in Bilbao, Spain, and was externally verified and published in accordance with international standards ISO 14025 and ISO 14040/14044. It will remain valid for five years.

The ring motor, a key component of the GMD, is a drive system without any gears where the transmission of the torque between the motor and the mill is done through the magnetic field in the air gap between the motor stator and the motor rotor. It optimises grinding applications in the minerals and mining industries by enabling variable-speed operation, leading to energy and cost savings.

The full EPD for the ABB GMD Ring Motor can be viewed on EPD International.

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