Last month, the US has generated more power from renewable sources than coal for the first time in history. Power output from wind, solar, and hydroelectric power generated nearly 68.5 million megawatt-hours of power in April 2019, compared to coal’s 60 million. This accounts for 23 percent of total electricity from renewables vs. 20 percent from coal.

Jobs in the renewable energy industry like wind and solar have been rising—and they pay well. Wind power jobs are wide-ranging, from wind turbine service technicians to machinists. Workers in many different occupations can lend their expertise in developing wind projects, especially in research and development where new technologies and processes are vital to this relatively new industry. 

The case is not the same for coal industry. In an article by The New York Times, an Appalachian coal miner has expressed his awareness that his region’s dependence on fossil fuel jobs needs to end. “Climate change is happening,” he said. “We have to tackle it before it becomes too large an entity to take on.” In coal states like Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and West Virginia, there were sharp drops in employment in the industry in the past, and it’s not going up. 

In Wyoming, the top-producing state in the U.S., a study conducted by its largest electricity supplier found that four coal-fired power plants are losing money and replacing them with renewable energy bought on the open market could save ratepayers in Wyoming and neighboring states more than $248 million. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) notes of the growing wind farm activity in the Cowboy State. “A series of new and upgraded wind farms with capacity totaling thousands of megawatts are in various stages of planning and development, owned by both utilities and private companies. And the soon-to-be-built transmission lines will help deliver the power to more-populated western states that crave clean power—chief among them, California,” according to its report.

Last month, Dominion has started building two 6-megawatt wind turbines off the coast of Virginia, which will be the first offshore wind project in federal waters. This will power some 3,000 homes with emissions-free energy. In Pennsylvania, Public Service Enterprise Group (PSEG), one of the country’s oldest power companies that use fossil fuels in the past century, announced an agreement to sell its stake in a pair of coal plants in western Pennsylvania. It has entered into an energy-management services agreement with Ocean Wind LLC, and has expressed interest in “helping offshore-wind developers build the transmission needed to bring the power from the wind farms to the markets.”

Illinois ranks sixth in the nation in wind power production. According to Chicago magazine State Rep. Will Davis introduced the Path to 100 Act, “which would commit the state to 40 percent renewable energy by 2030 and ‘[d]rive procurement of an estimated 6,000 MW of new utility scale solar, 6,500 MW of new wind power, [and] 7,500 MW of new residential, commercial and community scale solar.’ And the wind industry is already throwing its support behind the act.”