National Solar Jobs Census 2013 Teleconference Transcript

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Final Transcript

SPEAKERS

Bill Ritter, former Governor of Colorado and Director of the Center for the New Energy Economy at Colorado State University

Lyndon Rive, Chief Executive Officer of SolarCity

Tom Werner, Chief Executive Officer of SunPower

Amit Ronen, Director of The George Washington University Solar Institute

Philip Jordan, Vice President at BW Research Partnership

Andrea Luecke, Executive Director and President of The Solar Foundation

Moderator: Thomas P. Kimbis, Chairman of the Board of The Solar Foundation PRESENTATION Moderator Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. The conference

call will begin momentarily. Thank you for your patience.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to

the Solar Foundation’s National Solar Jobs Census 2013 Report.

At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, there

will be an opportunity for questions and comments, and instructions

will be given at that time. As a reminder, this conference call is

being recorded.

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January 27, 2014/9:45 a.m. CST


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I would now like to turn the call over to our host, Tom Kimbis. Tom,

please go ahead.

T. Kimbis Thanks, Rachel, and good morning, everybody. It’s an exciting

morning here in Washington, as we release the Solar Foundation’s

National Solar Jobs Census 2013. I’m Tom Kimbis. I’m Chairman

of the Solar Foundation.

The Solar Foundation is the national nonprofit for solar research

and education here in the United States. Today we’ll be discussing

the results of the fourth annual census conducted by the foundation

on solar jobs. It’s become a benchmark in the United States solar

industry.

The report that you’ll see today goes far beyond the top-line growth

numbers. It goes into significant depth, more than ever before, into

the components of the solar value chain, including manufacturing,

installation, sales, project development, etc.

A few reminders before we begin. After our panelists speak, we’ll

open up the lines to Q&A. Those will be operator assisted, so

Rachel will be able to help you with that.

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Please try to direct your questions, when we get to that point, to a

specific person or persons on the panel. And although the U.S.

solar market, as we all know, is an exciting and dynamic topic with

many hot issues going on today, today’s call will focus on the

results of this very important study being released today.

Our panelists that we’ll hear from today include Andrea Luecke,

who is Executive Director and President of the Solar Foundation;

Lyndon Rive, who is Chief Executive Officer of SolarCity; Tom

Werner, who’s President and Chief Executive Officer of SunPower

Corporation and Governor Ritter of Colorado, who is also the

Director of the Center for the New Energy Economy at Colorado

State University.

We also have with us today Amit Ronen, who is the Director of the

George Washington University Solar Institute, as well as Phil

Jordan, who’s the Vice President of BW Research Partnership.

We’ll be hearing short remarks from everybody I mentioned, with

the exception of Phil and Amit, who will be on the line as subject

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matter experts on the methodology of the study, as well as national

policy questions.

With that, it’s my pleasure to introduce Andrea Luecke, Head of the

Solar Foundation. Andrea?

A. Luecke Thanks, Tom. Just a few words of appreciation to all of you who

called in to hear about our exciting new jobs numbers, and also

thanks to our special panelists, Governor Bill Ritter, Lyndon Rive

and Tom Werner, for taking the time to share with us their reactions

to our big news today.

As Tom mentioned, I’m Andrea Luecke, Executive Director of the

Solar Foundation, and today, actually right at this very moment, my

team and I are rolling out our fourth annual National Solar Job

Census Report. The report was just posted literally minutes ago on

our website, and you can find it at TSFCensus.org.

As Tom mentioned, this year’s census was our most

comprehensive yet. We included new sector categories for

academic, nonprofit and government workers, and collected data

from 15,000 employers across the country in sectors ranging from

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manufacturing to installation to project development and sales. We

placed nearly 74,000 phone calls, sent over 11,000 emails and

collected hundreds of thousands of data points on job numbers,

growth expectations, business trends, policy perceptions, education

requirements, wages and even demographics.

Our response rate was excellent, as was our margin of error, and

we are very confident about our results as we utilized a highly

rigorous survey-based methodology, which the Bureau of Labor

statistics recognizes as the emerging standard for tracking jobs, like

Solar, that they don’t yet track.

So as for the top lines, for the fourth year in row the industry has

grown and is consistently putting people back to work. Since we

first started solar jobs in 2010, the industry has grown by an

astounding 53%, tracking nearly 50,000 new jobs.

Our census shows that the solar industry is generally diverse and

that the jobs remain well paid and attracts highly skilled workers.

This year was our very best year, in terms of growth, as solar

employment exceeded expectations. We grew by 20% creating ten

times the number of jobs as the overall economy.

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The solar industry is one of the fastest growing industries in

America. One in every one hundred forty-two new jobs in the U.S.

was created by the solar industry, and each day every day in 2013

the industry created fifty-six new jobs across the country. This is

very real, very tangible growth and it’s happening in all of our

backyards.

The industry is putting people back to work and lifting local

economies. It’s really been a real success, and that success is

expected to keep pace with installed capacity numbers.

Currently, as of November 2013, there are 142,698 solar jobs in

America. This is up from 119,000 last year. That’s an increase of

nearly 24,000 new jobs in one year, and the vast majority of these

jobs—this is actually a very important point—the vast majority of

these jobs, 90% of these jobs, are new jobs, not existing jobs with

added solar responsibility.

I think it’s also important to point out that two thirds of the 24,000

new jobs were in the installation sector, a sector that’s becoming

increasingly more efficient.

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Overall, I would say that it was an outstanding, record-breaking

year, and more growth is expected for 2014. Nearly half of all the

employers expect to hire in 2014, adding around 22,000 new

workers with a 15.6% growth rate. Now, if you compare this with

the overall U.S. economy that’s predicted to grow by only 1.4% in

2014, I think it’s very clear that the solar industry is on the rise.

In terms of projections, while we are elated to outpace most

industries in 2014, projections, I think, are really tough and you

have to take them with a grain of salt. While we exceeded our

projections, our growth projections in 2013 and doubled our pace of

hiring, it may not always be this way. The data will tell.

Regardless, I think that given the capacity projections that are out

there, the outlook for solar jobs is bright.

I think it goes without saying that there is so much more in the full

report, so many numbers, so much data. There’s a treasure trove

of data, but I want to leave plenty of room for my fellow panelists

and for Q&A.

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I’m supported today by two technical experts from my team, Phil

Jordan, VP and Principal with BW Research and Amit Ronen,

Director with the George Washington University Solar Institute.

They’re here to back me up and to answer any methodological and

policy questions that I am unable.

With that, thanks, everybody, for your attention and for your

interest. I do look forward to going over our data in more detail with

you. Tom, I’ll turn it back to you now. Thanks much.

T. Kimbis Great, thanks, Andrea. It’s now my pleasure to introduce or turn it

over to Lyndon Rive. Lyndon?

L. Rive Thanks, Tom, 2013 was a very exciting year for us. We added over

2,000 jobs in 2013 just at SolarCity itself. We’re now just under

4,500 employees in the U.S. Most of our jobs are in the fields and

highly distributed.

Something that’s unique at solar, which I really like, is there’s not

any central hub. If you look at other industries, it often creates local

jobs but often in a centralize location. Finance in New York,

entertainment in Southern California, technology is in Northern

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California, but with solar the jobs are spread across the entire

country. We are in 14 states, and the growth is doubling in all the

states. As mentioned, most of the new jobs are in the last part of

the value chain, which is delivering solar onto rooftop homes.

One thing that’s exciting about solar is the cost has come down to a

point now where we’re starting to work with … centers. Centers in

California and many states, Arizona, have essentially disappeared,

and yet the adoption has never been higher.

As the industry gets to scale, we will continue to be able to reduce

our costs. By making it possible to reduce our costs, we can make

solar affordable for more homeowners. … 90% of Americans want

more solar, but yet only 1% of Americans have solar.

So the growth in the market, to me, at least for the next ten years,

is going to be very, very exciting. We will continue to bring down

our costs. We’ll continue to create thousands, if not tens of

thousands of new jobs in the U.S. And you can’t outsource these

jobs. These jobs are local jobs, local to the community, not just

local to the country.

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Thank you, Tom.

T. Kimbis Thanks very much, Lyndon. Now I’d like to turn it over to Tom

Werner. Tom?

T. Werner Thanks, Tom. As Lyndon said, the solar market is growing quite

rapidly. The American solar market, in particular, is quite strong.

As Lyndon mentioned as well, that’s because solar is increasingly

competitive with conventional electricity and it’s a preferred source

of electricity.

SunPower’s thrilled to be a leader and part of that growth. We’ve

added a lot of jobs in the past year ourselves. We are

headquartered in Silicon Valley. We’ve added hundreds of jobs last

year in a diverse number of fields, including engineering,

construction, customer service, research and development,

operations, etc. So these are well-paying jobs that have staying

power.

We have over 1,000 people directly working for SunPower in the

United States across 10 states. We also have 400 SunPower

dealers across the United States who employs 6,000 more people.

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These are small businesses that average around 15 people per

business. These are the people that do SunPower install. So as

Lyndon noted, they are jobs that can’t be outsourced, and we are

expanding that dealer network quite rapidly.

We also do utility scale solar. We’re building the largest

photovoltaic power plant in the world. It’s called Solar Star. Last

year we were building both that and California Valley Solar Ranch,

and we employed 1,300 people building those two sites. Solar Star

will continue to be built out over the next couple of years.

We have 70 parts suppliers throughout the country, and they’re

across 30 states in 80 cities. I don’t have an employment number

for that, but that’s rather substantial as well. We do in fact

manufacture in California. We have a module manufacturing facility

based not far from our headquarters. So we’re thrilled to be part of

the solar industry, part of this very important report and part of

growing employment in America.

Thank you, Tom.

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T. Kimbis Thanks very much, Tom. Now I’ll turn it over to Governor Ritter.

Governor?

Governor Ritter Thanks, Tom. This is Bill Ritter, and I’m very heartened about the

report that I’ve been able peruse over the weekend. This report’s

encouraging, and I think it aligns with what states have been doing,

particularly in trying to develop energy policy that looks at clean

energy resources, solar being one of the cheap clean energy

resources, and trying to understand how to grow the economy

around that. To do things that really do protect the environment,

and at the same time help ratepayers be able to take advantage to

this kind of thing.

The dramatic drop in the price of solar has been one of the most

important developments, and you can see that along with that

dramatic price drop has come this increase in job creation. Every

governor who’s given a State of the Union so far this year has

talked about the importance of creating jobs in their state, and to

see an industry like this that is this robust and this vibrant, growing

and accelerating at a pace more than any other sector in the

economy, is significant for the solar and significant for increasing

adoption by people around the country and by policy makers.

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What we know from our work, we have a 30% renewable energy

standard I Colorado. We’ve worked with other states on creating

different kinds of standards for renewable energy, but we know that

that lends to some market certainty in that state for the industry.

That’s been the result for the solar industry in Colorado, but we see

it, as I say, happening in other states and you can see that reflected

in the installation numbers and the job increase.

I just completed a report for the president of the United States. It’s

called Powering Forward. It was really at the request of the White

House and other folks that I met with at the White House last

March, and this report is about executive actions that will drive a

clean energy economy in America. It assumes some level of

congressional inaction.

One of the things that we recommend is that the Bureau of Labor

Statistics goes back to actually reporting on green jobs. They have

done that initially in 2010. There was some lash back from

Congress and so they stopped reporting, but we think they should

go back to it and get some help defining what green jobs are.

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This report, this report about solar jobs in America, is an example of

how we need to tell people the story of energy in America where

there are nay sayers who, without the supportive data, say the

opposite. So this is really good news. Tom, I’m happy to be a part

of this and am encouraged to see both the 2013 numbers and the

prospect for increasing growth in 2014. Thanks a lot.

T. Kimbis Thank you, Governor. And with that, we’ll turn it back to our

operator, Rachel.

Moderator Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a

question, please press *1 on your telephone keypad. This will

place your question in the order it was received. Once again, if you

would like to ask a question, please press *1 on your telephone

keypad. And I will pause for just a moment to let questions come

in. Once again, that is *1 on your telephone keypad.

Our first question is from Edward Felker with Energy Guardian.

E. Felker Hi, can you hear my okay, Andrea?

T. Kimbis We hear you great, Edward.

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E. Felker The question’s for Andrea. If I follow the numbers correctly, you’re

looking at a little slower growth rate this year. Did you get a sense

from your folks why that was?

A. Luecke Yes, for 2014 we are predicting still double digits, 15.6% growth.

Last year it was something like 17% growth anticipation, and we

exceeded that with a 20% growth rate.

I think the reason we’re anticipating slightly slower growth in 2014

is due to more labor efficiencies. The installation sector is

becoming more efficient. It’s become 21% more efficient in 2013.

So with labor productivity, we will see employers maybe less

optimistic in terms of their ability to hire new folks, but that does not

necessarily affect their ability to still produce solar components and

install capacity.

Moderator Edward, did you have any follow-up questions? Okay, we’ll go to

our next question. As a reminder, you can ask a question by

pressing *1 on your telephone keypad. Our next question is from

Kate Ling with Greenwire.

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K. Ling Hi, this is Kate Ling with Greenwire. Thanks for hosting the call. A

quick question for Andrea and maybe the others can chime in too;

you noted that you have some new categories that you were rating

this year. Unfortunately I’m just taking a look at the report now and

the fact sheet. I guess it’s under the other, but I’m just wondering

how that affects the numbers. Did you go back and change the

numbers from before or how is that, I guess, included and factored

in?

A. Luecke I’ll try to answer this, but maybe Phil can jump in, in just a moment.

We did not go back and weight the previous years. We just started

from 2013, and we found that there are 625 solar workers at

nonprofits, about 600 in government and about 250 in academia. If

you do not include those new categories, our annual growth rate is

more like 18% versus 20%, but we believe that the nonprofit,

academic and government people were capture in some regard in

previous efforts. They were just specifically targeted.

Phi, do you want to provide a little bit more clarification on that?

P. Jordan Sure. So most of those jobs were considered in that catch-all other

category, but what we really wanted to figure out for this year was

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what do we mean by that other category and how does it break

down. Specifically, how much of the activity has fallen to some of

these neater and easier to organize categories like government,

nonprofit and academia, as opposed to kind of private consulting

services or other professional services or some of the R&D and

engineering services that don’t fall neatly into another category.

So as we went back and looked back at the data from previous

years, we found that there was significant representation in that

other category of nonprofit, government and academia. We didn’t

have a fine enough lens to kind of say how much in previous years

those were, because, as Andrea aid, we didn’t specifically target

them, but we’re confident that the overall majority of those jobs

were counted in the other category last year and in prior years.

K. Ling Okay. And then I just was wondering if there was a comparison to

jobs created here in the U.S. versus worldwide, if the U.S. is just a

baseline number of the jobs created?

A. Luecke This study really includes—it really focuses on U.S. job creation.

Globally, I’m sure Phil has a few thoughts in this. It would require a

very expensive data collection effort to do the same type of tracking

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that we do here in the U.S. globally. There are estimates out there.

REN21 puts out estimates on global jobs and solar. Comparatively,

it looks like the U.S. has a significant chunk of those jobs that are

estimated by other experts, like REN21.

T. Kimbis Great, thanks, Kate. Rachel, can we move on to our next

question?

Moderator Yes. Our next question is from Stephen Lacey with GreenTech

Media.

T. Kimbis Hey, Stephen, how are you?

S. Lacey Great. How are you?

T. Kimbis Good to hear from you. Go right ahead.

S. Lacey I had a question about many of the—this is kind of riffing on what

Governor Ritter talked about, in terms of telling the story about job

growth. At a time when we’re seen dozens of pieces of legislation

in states to weaken or repeal renewable energy standards or solar

targets, and then looking at some of the battles with utilities over

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net metering, how are you using this jobs report and previous jobs

reports as an actionable item in these states where you see these

battles taking place? What is the strategy for actually using this

report in telling that story, as Governor Ritter talked about?

T. Kimbis Governor, did you want to jump in for a minute on that one?

Governor Ritter Only that I think it is an important part of it. When I left office, I

found at the Center for the New Energy Economy this is certainly

part of what we do. We work with states on public policy around

clean energy and that involves a wide variety of different kinds of

energy policies, but showing and being able to demonstrate

economic development opportunities is a part of a policy because

the market certainty is certainly helpful.

I think one of the prior reporters asked a question about sort of

what’s happening. There’s going to be a variety of different

debates and state legislatures about valuing solar, and a report like

this is extremely helpful for anybody working on the policy angle.

So we do it not from an industry angle or really to lobby anyone bill,

but to demonstrate the ability to connect economic growth with

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clean energy opportunities. So I think that it’s going to be valuable

in places where that debate may still be going on, including

Colorado.

T. Werner Thanks, Governor. Stephen, this is Tom. I would say that SEIA,

the Solar Energy Industries Association, and its state policy efforts

will certainly find it beneficial, as the governor mentioned, in

pushing back against rollbacks of RPSs or net metering and being

able to show really what the facts are, what are the labor market

benefits from having solar within your economy and really creating

smart policy around the right facts.

Do any of our other panelists want to comment on this?

A. Ronen This is Amit Ronen from the DW Solar Institute, Stephen. One of

the overall trends that we see in a lot of the data that came in from

the survey is that there was a very direct correlation, this was

mentioned by the TOs from SolarCity and SunPower, to where

solar is going up is where the jobs are.

We’ll have more data on this coming out next month, but the states

that are putting up solar that’s where the jobs are. So you take a

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report like this and you talk about the relevant policies that are

incentivizing or, on the flip side, the policies that may hurt that

growth, and it’s going to directly affect what kind of jobs they’re

going to create.

L. Rive This is Lyndon. I have one other comment on that as well. When

you’re going up against an incumbent who’s been around for 100

years and has not needed to change its business model, there’s

going to be natural friction.

When you have a perfect business model where you never have to

worry about costs, the cost plus approach, and you never have to

worry about competition, the concept of competition, the concept of

an alternative solution is threatening. So there will naturally be

friction in this transformation.

But what this job census does now is it really says that there’s not

only a transformation of the way energy’s delivered, but there’s also

a transformation of jobs. So I think it will really help and support

further adoption of cleaner, cheaper energy.

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S. Lacey And just a quick follow-up question for you, Lyndon, you talked

about how in certain states we’re seeing a rollback or elimination of

incentives. I know particularly in California, in the third and fourth

quarters, we saw a lot of residential systems deployed without help

from the California Solar Initiative and we’re seeing conversations

about changing net metering, etc. How confident are you that you’ll

be able to grow as an employer and your installations will continue

to grow even with these rollbacks or changes taking place? What’s

your outlook for that broad set of changes that could potentially be

coming?

L. Rive If the changes are forecasted, so for example, in California the CSI

Program, it was a forecasted change. People had a long-term plan.

The entire industry knew that it had to reduce its costs to eventually

wind itself off the incentives. Those types of changes, the industry

can accommodate quite well. … we are reducing our costs.

The changes that are abrupt and not well calculated, those are the

ones that can hurt. We’ve had a strong debate in different states

that are going specifically to net metering. In California, the

decision was decided to take from the legislation and put it with the

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PC. They are going to calculate the cost and benefits of net

metering and then come out with a solution once we hit the 5% cap.

There is no more cap, by the way. So now it is unlimited net

metering in California. We just have to determine at what value. In

Arizona there could’ve been a preset outcome, but through help

with a few others the industry was able to convince the ACC that a

high fixed fee would be a bad outcome and destroy the solar

economy. So that didn’t happen.

We will have more of these battles ahead of us, but the more jobs

that we have in the area, the higher the adoption we have, the more

the momentum, the less the likelihood of an abrupt change.

Moderator Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question,

please press *1 on your telephone keypad, and we’ll go ahead and

move to our next question. This comes from Jennifer Runyon with

Renewable Energy World.

T. Kimbis Hi, Jennifer. Thanks for dialing in.

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J. Runyon Hi, everybody, yes, thanks for holding this call. I have a couple

questions, but the first is about—I’m looking at the fact sheet, and

there are the largest increases in what you’re calling solar project

developers. I’m wondering if you guys could speak a little bit about

why that was.

A. Luecke The increase in project developers is due to many companies along

the supply chain getting involved with utility scale installations over

the course of 2013. The increase in utility scale, we had a nice rise

between 2012 and 2103. It went from 3.75 to 14%, but we’re not

certain that in 2014 those numbers will remain as high.

Phil, do you want to add a little more context to that?

P. Jordan Sure. I would just say that there was a huge increase in the total

number of megawatts added to the grid, in terms of install capacity.

A large chunk of that was the utility scale operations finishing up

and coming on line and kind of hitting that pipeline in a time that

requires a lot of jobs. So I think that’s a key part of the overall

installation of install capacity or those types of firms getting

engaged in those large projects.

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J. Runyon Excellent. All right, thanks so much for that. So the second

question is about the manufacturing up tick. There’s tiny, little

growth in 2013, but you’re looking at an 8.6% growth in 2014. So

explain a little bit, what are you seeing?

A. Luecke This is Andrea. I’ll take the first crack at this. Yes, we’ve seen

some fluctuations. It’s a little bit difficult to identify exactly where

the trend line is. That is one benefit of doing these horizontal

comparisons year-over-year, but this is only our fourth year.

This year’s census showed growth, well, not really growth. It

showed that the U.S. manufacturing sector was stable. It didn’t

really grow. It didn’t lose jobs either, but it was a vast improvement

over last year when we lost about 8,000 solar manufacturing jobs.

It is true that a lot of modules are manufactured overseas, but the

price drop in solar is fueling the job growth that we’re seeing in

installation and manufacturers are feeling more or less optimistic

about their ability to survive and scale up as needed.

A. Ronen I’d just add a little bit to that. This is Amit Ronen from the GW Solar

Institute. I’d maybe hesitate a bit to make a trend or a finding over

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one year’s change. I think generally the U.S. continues to be a

world leader in some manufacturing, some of the higher value parts

of the solar system, and that’s good, but when you look worldwide

we still have a worldwide glut in PV panel manufacturing capacity.

So that hampers a lot of new growth in the U.S. when there’s that

sort of excess capacity already out there.

This is outside of scope of this particular census, but we’ve seen

that it’s been difficult for U.S. manufacturers to compete on the

panel manufacturing side with places like China where they’re

giving their industries tens of billions of dollars of subsidies.

J. Runyon Right. Okay, so that 8.6% for 2014, that’s what I was most curious

about. So you’re seeing—are there any real indications, anything

you could point to?

A. Luecke This is a really good question, Jen. I think it requires a little bit

more of a deeper dive into the data. As I mentioned, we have so

much data at our fingertips. We haven’t even scratched the

surface, in terms of understanding what it all means. I’d be happy

to follow up with you offline on this.

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J. Runyon Sure, yes.

T. Kimbis Jen, this is Tom Kimbis. I’m happy to follow up a little bit offline as

well. I will point out that although we’ve got in the fact sheet these

buckets of installation, manufacturing, sales and distribution, etc.,

combing comments that Amit made that it’s sort of a one year point,

being that it’s hard to show horizontal trends and the fact that we do

have a lot of data, one thing does rise to the top, which is that there

still is a huge potential in CFCs and enormous growth in

manufacturing ahead. It just might not be in the same traditional

ways that we’ve seen in the past.

… manufacturing, we’ve got lots of IP associated with it.

Manufacturing is not just about panels. It can be panels, but it’s not

just about panels. We’re looking across the entire sector there.

A. Luecke And, Jen, one last point about manufacturing growth expectations.

In 2011, they anticipated growing by 14%. We know that didn’t

happen. In 2012, they anticipated growing by about 9%, and in

2013 it’s 8%. So the numbers are really very much on par with

previous years.

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And I have to say that U.S. manufacturing, overall, has taken a big

hit and is crawling along, so any losses in solar manufacturing or

slow growth in solar manufacturing is not unexpected. The solar

industry is not an anomaly in this case.

P. Jordan And if I could just jump in quickly too, it’s important to remember

that the protected growth that we’re reporting is what employers

expect for their own firm over the next 12 months. That’s one part

of what drives job growth from year-to-year, and of course the other

point that drives job growth from year-to-year is start up, new

entrance into the sector and company debts.

So clearly a lot of what has been reported recently and some of

what we’ve seen in our data is that the companies that have

remained in solar and have remained strong in solar are doing quite

well, and there are companies that don’t exist anymore that used

to. So it’s not all about just what the specific companies who

responded to our census questions this year will do over the next

12 months.

I think that the situation with U.S. manufacturers is well

documented. Strong companies will survive and do well, other

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companies won’t and that’s just the way that the American

manufacturing sector looks these days. So I think that’s a very

important thing to remember going forward. It’s not just employer

projects that drive that growth. There’s also the dynamic of births,

deaths and new entrance.

J. Runyon Okay, great. Thank you.

Moderator Okay, we’ll take our next question. This comes from Glenna

Wiseman with Solar Chat.

T. Kimbis Hi, Glenna. Go ahead.

G. Wiseman Hi, everyone. Thank you, good morning. I am calling on behalf of

myself and Raina Russo, the founder of Solar Chat, the largest …

sphere community for solar and Women for Solar, a growing group.

Andrea, I just first want to applaud you for your stat on page six

where you started to document the percent of women in the

industry. We talked about that in Chicago, and I really was happy

to see that.

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So two questions, one, more specifically do you see that changing

in the next year? And then a little bit more global question in terms

of how can industry and government really help the solar industry

embrace women more in the industry and encourage their

participation? Thank you for taking my questions.

A. Luecke Thanks, Glenna. Yes, so women, this was our first time tracking

demographics across the industry. We included women in that and

veterans of the armed services. We found that one in five solar

workers is female, which is below the national workforce average.

The national workforce average is about 50% or so, but we are

finding that women are a very important part of the industry and

increasingly so. While this is a baseline number, we don’t really

have trend lines to use, but from my perspective, from my

experience, yes, women are increasingly becoming more involved

in the solar industry.

Your research shows that women represent the largest block of

residential solar purchasing decision makers, and we think that that

means that women are not only paying attention to industry trends

but they’re on the forefront of driving adoption trends. So women

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are extremely important. Diversity in companies, some research

shows that it leads to innovation and companies are embracing

this. … Edison, for example, has a program to en courage more

women in their staff and more diversity in general. A lot of

companies are taking the lead on this, and it’s encouraging.

T. Kimbis Thanks, Glenna.

Moderator Okay, and at this time I do not have any further questions in the

queue. So, Tom, I will turn the call back to you for closing

comments.

T. Kimbis Thanks very much, Rachel. Before we wrap up today, do we have

any comments from any of our other panelists who wanted to get a

point out there?

Well if not, I just wanted to congratulate Andrea and her team, and

Phil of BW Research for all of their work. Thank you to our

speakers, Governor Ritter, Lyndon Rive, Tom Werner, as well as

having Amit Ronen from the GW Solar Institute on. I think that you

guys have done a fantastic job today in covering the material for the

press.

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Andrea is always available for follow up, as am I. If we can’t get

answers to you, we’ll certainly be able to check in with Phil, on

methodology, and Amit Ronen with the Solar Institute at GW on any

policy matters.

I will point out that the state level numbers will be out in about a

month. That’s a deeper dive into the work that was done on this

census and will give us a little bit more transparency on what’s

happening within individual state markets, which goes with some of

the questions that were raised earlier on RPS, as well as net

metering issues, etc.

So with that, we’ll wrap up our call. Thank you very much for

participating. You can hang up your lines now. Thank you.

National Solar Jobs Census 2013 Teleconference Transcript

Government & Nonprofit

Transcript of National Solar Jobs Census 2013 Teleconference Transcript