analysis in order to flush out the numbers needed to convince skeptical labor groups, penny-wise consumers and politicians. The methodologies it employs are deliberately conservative. The results give new credence to the answers that have long made intuitive good sense. Clearly, job-creation is only one kind of measure of sensible productivity, others being net energy gain, perceived ecological integrity, the communal self-sufficiency of small units, and so on. (See page 20) But at this point, the is.~ue of jobs is 'be argument in the politics of energy, and since the interests of more jobs and safe, renewable energy are so eminently cumpatible, J(,bs from the Sun serves us well, indeed. On the other hand, there is implicit in JFTS a contradiction between the prospect of a new, high-growth industry for California (mentioned several times) and the socially optimum goal of a steady-state economy (never mentioned). How an economic boom based on the massive expansion of appropriate technologies and a conserver society ultimately Jive with each other is left unexplored. Instead, JFT.S can't help but observe that a new solar industry would even provide the opportunity for California to export its newly developed technologies elsewhere- in exchange for someone else's capital. This may be a bit of a ploy, but it is distinctly uncomfortable. What we face April 1978 RAIN Pa~e 9 change that we know must come. It is a.lso a highly integrative effort in that it openly seeks to span some very substantiaJ ideological gaps, such as: • small-scale production v. unionized labor • urban unemployed left v. small-town/individualist right • a large new state authority with money v. decentralized economic development The issue of jobs is already cutting through some of these old divisions; others are still relatively new territory which are JUSt being explored. Yet, however difficulr, it is high time that such differences are squarely addressed, because it is apparent that for too long a host of self-defeating attitudes, as well as the divide and conquer tactics pandered by corporate monopolies, have kept all Americans from seeing how much they really have in common with each other. Nothing has displayed OliT mutual best interests so clearly as the wb()le issue of energy development in the '70s and '80s. Tbere is greater potential now for linking up together over mattcrs of COmmon concern than in a long, long time. - Steven Ames is not simply the challenge of getting over another economic hump and then going back to business as usual. Our economies are going through a much more complex period of transition in which new energy is only one factor in a melange of resource scarcities and new social paradigm.s. Profound changes in our values and politics are in order, and boom-psychology is not among them. It can only let us down. It should also be noted that JFTS does not analyze the Job-producing, energy-conserving possibilities of other appropriate energy technologies such as wind generation, photovoltaics, biomass conversion and passive solar design. This is understandable due to its focus on space :ll1d water heating and the purpose of the SolarCal proposal itself. But it can also leave the solutions to the coming period of energy transition looki ng slightly one-dimensional. In reality, a multiplicity of energy demands and resources will require a multiplicity of responses in a multiplicity of situations. This is the ecologic and beauty of the decentralized approach. Pegging too much hope on one potential,solution as a cure-all would be a very rigid response to a complicated challenge demanding great flexibil ity. As for SolarCal, its establishment of a new state authority is good enough cause for worry, like other governmental and quasi-governmental efforts that try to respond progressively to problems. (See page 4). All of SolarCal's potential constituencies have been burned by big bureaucracies. whether they are middle-elass homeowners, the unemployed or small businesses. Beyond this is the genuine and familiar fear that building an institutional framework within which to promote small-scale technologies may preclude the very goals of increasing community self-reliance and the decentralization of political power we hold so dearly. A major economic transition, however, is a tough order to fill, and we need to search out tbe momentum that gets us going down the right path. The Jobs frum the Sun/SolarCal endeavor is a well-coordinated effort that has honed in on an impressive first-plank strategy for encouraging the broader social and economic SOLARCAI~ UPDATE As RAIN goes to press, we have learned of new changes in the status of the SolarCal proposal, now before the California legislature. Because of opposition in the legislature to the prospect of forming a new state agency and coming up with additional funding, SolarCal has been divided into 12 separate bills stressing most of the important concepts, including loans to consumers and small businesses and solar planning. This certainly raises the possibility that the integrative nature of the original proposaJ is endangered, especially if important components of the legislative package are shafted. The Campaign for Economic Democracy (CEO), main political promoter of SolarCal, will continue to work for the passage of the biUs, as well as engaging in two other important strategies: 1) pushing the state's Public Utilities Commission (PUC) to keep the utilities out of the new solar industry; and 2) taking the impressive new statistics on solar jobs to the publk-ar-large. Interesti.ngly, because taxes and bonds are not now a feasible source of capital for seeding the solar option, the alternative appears to be working through the PUC to authorize long-term loans provided by the utilities themselves for a statewide conversion. There are precedents for such a development. In sum, as CEO sees it. the real choice in energy development is between big and small, and if the only way small solar businesses can survive is in a new partnership with government, through whieh they tap into private capital pools, then so be it. - SA 1 California has already taken the national lead in the number of solar ener~firms, and in December 1977 initiated the nation's first tax credit for purchasers of solar systems. 2 Calculated at the number of solar jobs that would be generated by a solar program aimed at retrofitting 75 percent of California's residential and 50 percent of its commercial sectors, supplying process heat for industrial uses that require temperatures up to 212·. as well as providing all new construction between 1981 and 1970 with solar. These can be divided into "immediate" and "near term" priority group•. 3 These new jobs would not be substituted for jobs that would otherwise exist. 4 Natural gas provided 90 percent of space and water heating in the residential sector in California in 1975, and 77 percent in Ule commercial sector. This reliance, if continued, must be increasingly supplied from non-California, capital-exporting sources. LNG is the only source even providing enough new Jobs upon which to base this comparison.
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