Letter: Solar power paying dividends

Congratulations to South Carolina’s Palmetto Electric Cooperative. It is building a “solar farm” and, in three days, sold out all 240 shares in it to customers wanting to support the use of solar energy.

I recently returned from a trip to China. They are significantly expanding their solar-panel production and plan to add 13 million jobs in the next few years in production and installation. The impetus? The desire to clean their dirty air and proactively exploit a tremendous job opportunity with worldwide implications.

Owners of many local homes, businesses and warehouses have found individual solar energy production to be quite financially feasible and rewarding.

Although the solar equipment production and installation employment category is one of the fastest growing in the United States, and now employs more U.S. citizens and at higher wages than our coal industry, many legislators are adamantly opposed to solar (the millions in campaign contributions from the low-paying coal industry seem to be having the desired effect) and many communities are hesitant to make the switch because of the way the panels look.

Politicians all talk “jobs, jobs, jobs,” but I wonder which way our new Congress will go: hundreds of thousands of relatively high-paying American solar manufacturing and installation jobs and clean air, or Chinese jobs and dirty air?

Stay tuned. Their actions will speak louder than their words.

This story was originally published March 7, 2017 at 5:21 PM with the headline "Letter: Solar power paying dividends."