There’s good news and bad news. The good news: in a new report, the Texas Advanced Energy Business Alliance (TAEBA) found that more than 250,000 Texans worked in the advanced energy sector in 2019, three times as many as worked in Chemical Manufacturing. In fact, more Texans worked in the clean energy sector than worked in the real estate sector.
Now the bad news: despite healthy growth in 2019 of roughly four percent, TAEBA said it estimates that nearly 10 percent of those jobs were lost in mid-2020 due to the COVID-19 Pandemic. Many of those job losses are related to a slowdown in energy projects, as well as the difficulty in energy efficiency contract work, such as weatherization, which relies on access to people’s homes. The vast majority of Advanced Energy jobs -- almost 170,000 - in Texas were related to energy efficiency. Other major sectors included renewable electricity generation (48,800 jobs), advanced grid and energy storage (13,200) and 17,300 in advanced vehicles.
The pandemic hit the industry particularly hard in the late spring, although there has been some bounce back in June, TAEBA reported. Earlier this month, the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club, signed and sent a letter along with many other industry and advocacy groups calling on the Texas congressional delegation to prioritize clean energy jobs in a future stimulus package. Texas - which has met roughly 30 percent of its electricity needs with wind and solar through the first six months of the year -- is a major growth state for renewable and energy efficiency projects, and any economic stimulus needs to focus on our future of electric vehicles, efficient buildings and clean energy. A copy of our letter can be found here.