NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- At a solar power company in downtown San Francisco, Edward Fenster plans on doubling his workforce to 8,000 people in the next year.
Fenster is chief executive of SunRun, a company that puts solar panels on residential rooftops.Over the last four years, his business has grown from one employee (himself) to 4,000, most of them contractors SunRun hires to do the installations.
Sun Run's growth spurt is in large part due to the subsidies it enjoys from the federal government. Fenster expects his customers to more than double next year.
Generally, tax breaks mean the federal government absorbs about 30% of the costs for a solar project. That's fairly standard across the wind and solar industry. Fenster knows just where his business, and others like it, would be if those subsidies disappeared.
I think investing in renewable energy is very important that its environmental programs should not be cut for many reasons such as creating jobs, building new factories, environmental-friendly, free of foreign oil imports etc. However, on the other hand, the products for renewable energy tend to be expensive to consumers but will be beneficial in the long run. Ideally, this renewable program could be used as a buffer against foreign imported oil in order to prevent jobs from being lost.
2 comments:
It's good to see more investments in enhancing the sustainability of the environment. However, we should not focus too much on creating jobs as a reason. Since the alternative energy is expensive in the short sun, we should try our best in advancing technology in order to reduce the cost of production and increase efficiency.
I agree. I think renewable energy and the programs that support it are very important not only in our economy, but to the world we live and breathe in. Programs sprouting up are creating jobs within our economy. This is important since our economy is going through recovery. Even though it is expensive and even a little risky, paying for these renewable energy programs will be beneficial in the long run.
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