For quite some time now the global coal industry has been suffering from nose-diving prices and coordinated efforts by governments to reduce dependence on fossil fuels. But perhaps the most affected so far has been the US coal sector, where competition from other fuels such as natural gas and tougher proposed regulation have pushed a number of producers to seek bankruptcy protection, leaving at least 50,000 people out of work in the last six years.

According to a recent study, however, the solution may be just around the corner as all those unemployed coal miners could be easily and cheaply retrained to work in the solar industry.

Less than 5% of yearly coal sector revenue would pay to retrain workers in the solar industry, says the study.

In a paper recently published in the journal of Energy Economics, Michigan University associate professor Joshua Pearce and Oregon State University’s Ph.D student Edward Louie, argue that the booming US solar market could easily absorb the job losses that have occurred in the domestic coal business over the next 15 years.

While it is a somewhat idealized scenario, Louie and Pearce explore three questions: How closely do the skills in the coal industry match those needed in the solar industry? What would it cost to retrain coal miners? And where could those funds come from?

The answers are all quite optimistic: The skills match pretty well, it wouldn’t cost that much, and there are a number of possible sources of funding.

As Pearce himself summarizes in a piece written for the Harvard Business Review:

“…We looked at all current coal industry positions (from engineers to mining and power plant operators to administrative workers), the skill sets required for each (for example, specific degrees and amount of work experience), and their respective average salaries. For each type of coal position, we determined the closest equivalent solar position and salary.

For example, an operations engineer in the coal industry could retrain to be a manufacturing technician in solar and expect about a 10% salary increase. Similarly, explosive workers, ordinance handlers, and blasters in the coal industry could use their sophisticated safety experience and obtain additional training to become commercial solar technicians and earn about 11% more on average.”

Winners and losers

According to the academic, those retrained coal workers would have much better salaries in the solar industry than in the coal sector, but the big losers would be managers and top executives, who would make a lot less. (Though coal industry executives may not attract much sympathy for this considering some bad publicity fuelled by recent news).