For the first time in history there are more solar jobs than coal jobs in Virginia.

Courtesy of WTVF: 

Virginia has long been coal country, but the solar power industry has been increasing its foothold in the Commonwealth over the last few years. And now, Michael Pope reports that a significant shift is taking place.

Virginia now has more jobs in the solar industry than the coal industry. Numbers from the Virginia Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy show a 40% drop in the number of people working in the coal industry over the last five years. Henry Childress with the Virginia Coal and Energy Alliance says coal produces more energy with fewer employees. 

“Coal will produce more jobs I think in the long term. But we’ve had to cut back because everyone feels like it’s not worth it to use coal anymore. And I feel that there will be a time when we will have to turn back to coal to meet the demand.” 

For now, though, the solar industry has more employees in Virginia than the coal industry. That’s a dramatic shift for a state that has a long history with coal. 

Yeah I think that this Childress fellow is engaging in a little wishful thinking there. 

These solar power jobs will only continue to increase while the coal jobs are eventually going to disappear forever as renewable energy becomes ever more affordable. 

The fact is that the whole planet is going green, and even though Virginia may be dragging their coal blackened heels, they will inevitably have to face that reality.

Welcome to the future where you could soon be applying paint to your house to absorbs solar energy and power your home.

Courtesy of Digital Trends: 

Imagine if painting the outside of your house not only made it look easy on the eye, but also took care of all of your home’s energy needs.

This, it seems, could soon be a reality as researchers in Australia have come up with a “solar paint” capable of absorbing moisture from the air and turning it into hydrogen fuel for clean energy. 

Based at RMIT University in Melbourne, southern Australia, the research team has developed a unique paint containing a newly developed compound that acts like silica gel — that’s the stuff used in those little sachets that absorb moisture to keep things like food, medicines, and electronics in good shape. 

But where they differ is that the new material, called synthetic molybdenum-sulphide, “also acts as a semiconductor and catalyzes the splitting of water atoms into hydrogen and oxygen,” a report on the university’s website explained. 

RMIT lead researcher Dr. Torben Daeneke said his team discovered that “mixing the compound with titanium oxide particles leads to a sunlight-absorbing paint that produces hydrogen fuel from solar energy and moist air.”

Okay we may not yet have flying cars, but you have to admit that they we are living in amazing times.