Comparison of Energy Technologies on Economics, Jobs, Land Footprints and More

Last May, Public Utilities Fortnightly published an independent analysis by Navigant Consulting that provided some great comparisons between various energy technologies. One of the comparisons is the number of jobs created on an equivalent basis.

To analyze the economic and workforce contributions of various energy technologies, the authors began by reviewing the contribution of permanent direct local jobs per megawatt of installed electric capacity for the most common types of generation technologies…

On top of jobs, the analysis calculated the workforce impacts from each technology. Here’s what it said about nuclear:

Nuclear plants create the largest workforce annual income based on both large capacity and being a labor-intensive technology (see Figure 3). The average wages in the nuclear industry compare favorably with other power generation technologies. While nuclear power plant operator wages may approach $50 an hour, the large support staff and security force wages tend to lower the overall average below that of other technologies.

The article goes on to provide a few other equivalent comparisons such as land footprints and construction lead times. Make sure to check out the rest of the four page piece, it’s quite good.