The future of solar energy in South Carolina is glowing with potential, as highlighted in The Economic Impact of the Solar Industry in South Carolina. This report, prepared by Dr. Joseph C. Von Nessen of the University of South Carolina, offers a compelling look at how the state’s solar industry is poised to deliver profound economic benefits while helping meet rising energy demands.
By 2035, the solar sector is projected to quadruple its current annual economic impact, injecting up to $19 billion into the state’s economy over the next decade. This growth in the solar sector will create more than 3,000 jobs and stimulate South Carolina’s economy while utilizing a maximum of 1.4 percent of agricultural land, allowing the state to position itself as a leader in solar development.
The Palmetto State has every reason to embrace a bright, sustainable energy future, but a lot has to happen for South Carolina to take advantage of this potential.
Is South Carolina ready for solar growth?
Legislative and utility program opportunities exist. Is the workforce ready? What about other land options besides agricultural land?
Legislation and Utility Programs
House legislation has been pre-filed to help move things forward. It is now up to legislators to ensure that renewables legislation will continue accelerating solar generation in South Carolina.
In addition to legislation, utility programs can be an opportunity or a roadblock for solar growth. Programs such as Duke Energy’s PowerPair, being piloted in North Carolina, can boost the opportunity to generate electricity from solar. Residents, public entities, businesses, and industry would all benefit from this opportunity. These programs need to be opened up to provide this opportunity to make these entities resilient.
Workforce
With this growth comes a need for more people in the solar industry to install, sell, and fulfill management and administrative roles at solar companies. Is South Carolina ready? Are the technical colleges and universities providing solar workforce training? Are high schools educating on renewable energy? There are great programs at Coastal Carolina University, Lexington Richland 5, and Richland School District Two; and new programs like the one by Solar United National are also paving the way for the solar workforce. The South Carolina Energy Office is a great resource for energy workforce training.
Let’s learn from these programs, expand education, and grow the solar workforce so South Carolina is ready for the demand.
It’s not just agricultural land
This new report acknowledges that 1.4% of agricultural land is a conservative estimate, which is correct. In addition to agricultural land, solar can also be installed on the roofs of homes, multifamily buildings, communities, churches, commercial buildings, land adjacent to churches, warehouses/distribution centers, roofs of industrial facilities, land adjacent to industrial facilities, military bases, healthcare facilities, etc.
South Carolina’s future is so bright we have to wear shades. Let’s harness this sun to generate electricity and usher in a bright future for the next generation.
The post South Carolina’s Solar Future is Bright appeared first on SACE | Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.
Decent and intelligent people respect the rights of parents to homeschool their children, but there are two reasons for concern: a) socialization, failure to expose children to their peers, so that they may make friends and come to understand the norms of society, and b) the quality of the education itself.
Almost all homeschooling in the United States is conducted on the basis of a radical rightwing viewpoint, normally a blend of evangelical Christianity and Trumpism.
There’s a theory that most people underestimate the positive effects they’ve had on other people.
Yes, that’s the theme of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” but it’s also the core of the 1995 film “Mr. Holland’s Opus,” in which a music teacher who deemed that his life had been a failure because he never completed writing a great symphony, is gently and beautifully corrected. Please see below.
The Positive Effects We’ve Had on Others Are Profound, Whether We Know It or Not
In the early days of 2GreenEnergy, my people and I were vigorously engaged in finding solid ideas in cleantech that needed funding in order to move forward.
I vividly remember a conversation with a guy in Maryland who was trying to explain the (ostensible) breakthrough that he and his team had made in hydrokinetics. When I was having trouble visualizing what we was talking about, he asked me to “think of it as a river in a box.”
“Oh!” I exclaimed. “You mean you take a box full of standing water, add energy to it get it moving, then extract that energy, leaving you with more energy that you added to it.”
“Exactly.”
I politely explained that the laws of physics, specifically the first and second laws of thermodynamics, make this impossible.
He wasn’t through, however, and insisted that, in his office, his people had constructed a “working model.”
Here’s where my tone descended into something less than 100% polite. I told him that he may think he has a working model, but he’s wrong; if he believes this, he’s ignorant; if he doesn’t, but is conducting this conversation anyway, he’s a fraud.
“But don’t you want to come see it?” he implored.
“No. Not only would not fly across the country to see whatever it is you claim to have built, I wouldn’t walk across the street to a “working model” of something that is theoretically impossible.”
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I tell this story because the claim made at the upper left is essentially identical. You’re pumping water up out of a stream, and then claiming to extract more energy when the water flows back into the stream.
Of course, social media today is rife with complete crap like this. We’ve devolved to a point where defrauding money out of idiots is rapidly replacing baseball as our national pastime.
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