Australia’s solar industry employs a “far larger” amount of people than its fossil-fuelled power stations, a new report has found.
The report, released on Monday by The Australia Institute says that in 2014, 4,300 solar PV businesses employed 13,300 people in Australia – a vast increase on 2008 numbers, when the industry only employed 1,800 people.
This was a “far larger” amount that the total employed in Australia’s coal-fired power stations, said the report, and a good deal larger that the total number of people working in the entire electricity generation sector, which amounted to 9,487 in 2007 according to the ABS, a figure which also included those employed in gas, hydro and renewable energy generation.
Australia’s biggest existing coal-fired power generators, such as Macquarie Generation and Stanwell, employed only 642 and 800 FTE workers respectively, said the TAI.
it is estimated that an additional 8,000 jobs will be created in the four years from 2014 to 2018.
“The solar industry is likely to become an even bigger employer in the near future as the price of both solar panels and battery storage come down,” says the report.
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