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Clean Energy Could Get Americans Back to Work Post-Pandemic

America’s grid was built to support fossil fuels; power is generated at centralized locations and then travels long distances over transmission lines to power peoples’ homes and businesses, Justine Calma writes for TheVerge.com.

Renewable energy generation, on the other hand, is distributed more widely.  There’s also the issue of intermittency:  the amount of energy coming into the grid from wind and solar farms across the U.S. can vary with the weather.  So an updated and expanded grid needs to be able to get excess renewable energy generated in one location to other places that need it.

Getting all of that done is a massive undertaking that would require a lot of boots on the ground.   Clean energy can offer a new career path for many of the millions of people who’ve lost their jobs recently.  The distributed nature of renewables also means they have the potential to employ people locally across all 50 states, rather than tying jobs to regions with rich oil, gas, or coal deposits.

Read the story here.