r/Glasgow Tools

Title
Author	meepmeep13
Comment	Mechanisation from the 70s killed off the vast majority of coal jobs compared to the hayday - and is basically what made plants like Longannet economic to run. There was probably a lot fewer people working to move that coal around than you might think! Fossil power stations are actually not great for job creation compared to their overall economic throughput - in terms of pure employment numbers, each coal power station like Longannet would only employ around 200 people, and around 20 such plants have closed down around the UK since 2001. The coal industry in 1993 (ie just prior to Kyoto and us beginning to close down coal generation) employed 44,000 people. So ignoring that includes non-electricity uses of coal, that's about 50,000 people employed by the industry. By comparison, around 120,000 people are employed by the UK renewables sector today, with an expectation that this will double in the next decade. Offshore gas employment is difficult to separate from oil, but at least another 150,000+ jobs at the moment. Obviously the jobs aren't a like-for-like replacement, but one of the advantages of the switch to renewables is that, in fact, it creates a lot more opportunities, and supports economic development outside the main urban areas - hence the push for a 'green' recovery that has multiple societal benefits beyond just emissions reduction. In the particular case of Longannet, the proposed train manufacturing plant proposed for the site will employ about 5 times as many people as the power station did.
Reddit Link	https://www.reddit.com/r/glasgow/comments/mfi3zw/the_steamie_monday_29_march_2021/gso90pn/
Created	Mon 29th Mar 2021 11:32am
Status	normal ()

Mechanisation from the 70s killed off the vast majority of coal jobs compared to the hayday - and is basically what made plants like Longannet economic to run. There was probably a lot fewer people working to move that coal around than you might think!

Fossil power stations are actually not great for job creation compared to their overall economic throughput - in terms of pure employment numbers, each coal power station like Longannet would only employ around 200 people, and around 20 such plants have closed down around the UK since 2001. The coal industry in 1993 (ie just prior to Kyoto and us beginning to close down coal generation) employed 44,000 people. So ignoring that includes non-electricity uses of coal, that's about 50,000 people employed by the industry.

By comparison, around 120,000 people are employed by the UK renewables sector today, with an expectation that this will double in the next decade. Offshore gas employment is difficult to separate from oil, but at least another 150,000+ jobs at the moment.

Obviously the jobs aren't a like-for-like replacement, but one of the advantages of the switch to renewables is that, in fact, it creates a lot more opportunities, and supports economic development outside the main urban areas - hence the push for a 'green' recovery that has multiple societal benefits beyond just emissions reduction.

In the particular case of Longannet, the proposed train manufacturing plant proposed for the site will employ about 5 times as many people as the power station did.