By Jeffrey Winters, Supplement Editor

It's an article of faith that switching to renewable energy, as desirable as that might be to some, is not economically viable. This idea is part of a larger argument against any number of measures, from requiring automakers to produce more fuel-efficient vehicles to reducing smokestack emissions from power plants.

Vice President Richard Cheney summed up this viewpoint in 2001 when he dismissed alternative energy sources and attempts to reduce consumption. "Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue," Cheney said, "but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy."

But a report released in April by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, says the concept of renewable energy as an economic drag may be short-sighted. Over the course of the life of a facility, the authors say, a photovoltaic array, wind farm, or biomass conversion plant would produce as many as 10 times the jobs as an equivalent coal- or gas-fired generating plant.

The conclusion was based on data from 12 different studies of the impact of energy on employment conducted since 1998. This impact comes not just from construction work, but also from operation and maintenance, fuel processing, and indirect employment from areas such as steel mills and cement plants needed to support construction.

But the authors, Daniel Kammen, Kamal Kapadia, and Matthias Fripp of the Energy and Resources Group at UC Berkeley, were careful not to give renewable sources too much weight. After all, a solar facility that is rated at 1 MW might produce at that power level just 20 percent of the time—once day-night cycles and weather are accounted for. Each technology was adjusted accordingly, and the jobs produced were divided by the actual megawatts generated.

Coal and gas plants, the authors calculate, create 11 job-years (which could be 11 jobs that last a year or one job that lasts 11 years) for each 100 GWh generated.

Getting power from biomass would create between nine and 33 job-years to make the same 100 GWh, while estimates for wind ranged between eight and more than 100. Making electricity from photovoltaic cells was calculated to be especially fruitful, adding between 85 and 121 job-years to the economy for each new 100 GWh.

What's more, each dollar invested in renewable generation adds 40 percent more job-years than the same dollar invested in fossil fuels.

Over time, the authors say, the difference would be considerable.

They studied different means of adding 20 percent to the national generating capacity by 2020. Tapping renewable energy would create more than 100,000 extra jobs as opposed to adding capacity through conventional fossil fuels.

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