The Virginia Mercury covered Virginia AEE's release of the latest Virginia Advanced Energy fact sheet, reporting top counties for jobs and quoting AEE's Bob Keough. See excerpts below and read the entire VM piece here.
Advanced energy jobs continue to be largely clustered in major metro areas in eastern Virginia, a report released this week by a national energy industry business group shows. According to data from Advanced Energy Economy, the largest number of advanced energy jobs in Virginia are found in Fairfax County, the state’s largest locality.
Fairfax, population 1.1 million, clocks in at 20,722 advanced energy jobs. Its neighbors also make a strong showing, with Loudoun coming in at No. 2 (5,438 jobs), Arlington at No. 4 (4,597 jobs) and Prince William at No. 7 (4,080 jobs).Other places that ranked highly include the Hampton Roads and Richmond metro areas...The group... estimates that there are currently 101,400 jobs in the advanced energy sector in Virginia, roughly three-quarters of which are related to energy efficiency. According to Robert Keough, senior vice president of content for AEE, these numbers are “headcount” figures encompassing both part- and full-time jobs...
Virginia has encouraged the growth of renewable energy sources and infrastructure through the Grid Transformation and Security Act passed by the General Assembly in 2018. Among other measures, this legislation declared the development of 5,000 megawatts of solar and wind energy to be in the public interest and required electric utilities to formulate long-term energy efficiency plans.
Read the entire Virginia Mercury piece here and see related Energy Central post here.