Caton Fenz thought that it would be a great year. The 44-year-old CEO of Houston-based ConnectGen, which builds wind and solar power plants that sell electricity to utilities, had planned to hire several new workers.
Fenz's company is looking for a dozen employees after Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act.
Fenz said that it had grown 25%. Projections go from medium to massive after the IRA. You have to have people to do it.
Fenz is facing a hiring dilemma because of the new law, which set aside more than $400 billion over 10 years, mostly in tax credits, to promote and accelerate the spread of clean energy.
Honda and Toyota have said they will build battery plants in Ohio and North Carolina because of the bill. A $1.2 billion plant for solar panels has been announced.
The bill will spark a tripling in renewable electricity capacity by the year 2030.
One million people are expected to be employed in clean energy by the end of the decade. The entire supply chain will be built upon industries that are already established.
More than half a million new jobs are expected in the clean electricity sector from the law. It is projected that the industry will spend $600 billion to triple the nation's capacity for wind and solar power by the year 2030.
Matthew Ybarra said that GM expects to announce a fourth battery cell plant soon. Quality, safety and production will be the main areas of employment for the first three plants. According to Catherine Hargett, Ford has announced 17,000 new production jobs for electric vehicles in the last year.
The law's proponents are increasingly estranged from Musk and may be the biggest beneficiary of that. Rod Lache, an analyst at Wolfe Research, said on Sept. 6 that the impact of the law could lead to a 30% increase in the stock price ofTesla. Under the new law, manyTeslas are too expensive to qualify for consumer tax credits, but that won't stop them from getting breaks at the corporate level.
According to Lache, the credit could cut the cost of an EV car battery by 45%. Even before the consumer tax credit, electric cars should be as cheap as gas- powered cars.
Most of the money and jobs come from a few things in the law.
Buyers of electric vehicles can get a tax credit. A $4,000 credit is given to buyers of used EV's. Before the law was passed, each automaker was supposed to give credits to its first 200,000 buyers of new electric vehicles, including plug-in hybrid vehicles. Limits for the price of covered vehicles and the income of buyers were added to the new law. The U.S. investment is being driven by domestic-content rules.
There is a tax credit of up to 30% of the cost of building new solar and wind power plants. Developers of power projects can claim a tax credit of up to 2 cents per kilowatt hour.
Dan Shugar is the CEO and co-founder of Flex, which makes equipment used in solar power systems.
He said that one of them is next to a new steel mill in Texas. If domestic-content targets are reached the law encourages moves like this by increasing the tax credits.
All the components can be made here if we create an ecosystems.
He said that the longer duration of the credits under the new rules makes it easier for Congress to keep the tax breaks. The reduction of the investment tax credit was scheduled before the law was enacted, which helped cause the decline in new renewable projects.
Shugar said that it created a stable policy so that customers wouldn't be confused.
The use of renewable power in the US has doubled since 2007, as costs for new construction of renewable power have fallen and battery technology has improved. The US Department of Energy data shows that wind and solar now account for 12% of all electricity.
As soon as this year, the share of U.S. electricity produced by renewable sources could surpass that of coal. The largest source of power is natural gas.
Many of the people who land these clean power jobs could come from the oil and gas industry.
There are major project management skills that can be transferred. We need to transition capital and people.
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