Solar workers facing a cloudy future
Fear industry being deemphasized in favor of coal despite job growth
CHARLOTTE, North Carolina -Mike Catanzaro, a solar panel installer with a high school diploma, likes to work with his hands under the clear Carolina sky. That's why he supported President Donald Trump, a defender of blue-collar workers. But the 25-year-old sees Trump's withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement as a threat to his job.
"I'm a little nervous about it. The solar business is blowing up and that's great for a lot of people around here," Catanzaro said, just after switching on an 86-panel array atop a brick apartment building.
"I was in favor of Trump, which I might regret now," he said. "I just don't want solar to go down the wrong path."
While some employed in particular industries have celebrated the U.S. exit from the Paris agreement, the responses of workers such as Catanzaro add a considerable wrinkle to Trump's promises that scrapping the accords could save millions of people "trapped in poverty and joblessness."
The more complicated truth, experts say, is that while there could well be some winners — such as workers in the coal industry — their numbers will pale in comparison to the demand for workers in industries preparing the U.S. and other countries for a clean energy future.
About 370,000 people work for solar companies in the United States, with the majority of them employed in installations, according to the Department of Energy. More than 9,500 solar jobs have cropped up in North Carolina alone, the study found.
That's more than natural gas (2,181), coal (2,115) and oil genera- tion (480) combined.
The growth followed federal government tax credits and other supports, under President Obama.
The country today has roughly 51,000 mining jobs, a sharp fall from 89,400 in 2011, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The latest jobs report, out Friday, showed mining added 400 jobs in May.
Not everyone in the renewable industry will be affected by the departure from the Paris accord. Major players in the power industry, such as Duke Energy, a utility based in Charlotte that has heavily relied on coal in the past, say they remain committed to moving away from the older, more polluting sources of energy.
But Trump's move could be devastating for small-scale operators like Catanzaro's, some of whom benefited directly from Obama-era incentives.
Catanzaro, 25, quit college after his first semester and has been working mostly in the solar industry ever since. He found his current job at Accelerate Solar five months ago on Craigslist.
"It's the energy of the future," Catanzaro said. "I mean, really: It's electricity from the sun. It's self-sustaining."
Solar is a rare expanding blue-collar opportunity in North Carolina, said Jason Jolley, an economics professor at Ohio University who grew up in the state.
The state's traditional blue-collar sources of employment — tobacco, textile and furniture manufacturing — have all declined since the nineties, in part because of cheaper labor abroad. Catanzaro's job pays about $20 an hour, but offers no benefits.
His $40,000-a-year annual wages are in the same range as the older blue-collar jobs.
Workers in North Carolina's furniture factories earn an average salary of about $39,300. Those in tobacco make about $45,000, while the typical wages for furniture makers top out at $40,000.
North Carolina generally doesn't employ coal miners, but if Catanzaro found work as a coal miner in West Virginia he could expect to earn $55,000.
The solar installer said he is earning enough to rent a four-bedroom house for his wife and three children, and is hoping to save up enough to pursue his electrician's license. That will open up a more lucrative path in the solar field, he said.
Summer, meanwhile, is overtime season — "the top of the solar coaster," as he says — and Catanzaro said he hopes to work at least 50 hours per week until fall.