A report card issued by an advocacy group says solar jobs in Kentucky are still relatively few, but are growing.
The assessment by The Solar Foundation found that there were about 1,200 jobs last year in the solar industry in Kentucky, which represents a 20 percent growth from 2015.
The Solar Foundation president Andrea Luecke says even though Kentucky isn’t one of the nation’s leaders in solar jobs, there’s a lot of potential here. And there are correlations between these jobs in the industry and consumers’ demand for solar energy.
“Where you have a demand for solar installation, that’s where you’re going to have the jobs cropping up,” Luecke said. “When you have a state that is growing in terms of jobs, that’s a good sign. It signals that there are some market drivers, that there is an appetite from consumers for more solar energy.”
In Kentucky, nearly a third of the state’s solar jobs are in Jefferson and Fayette counties. But a number of other counties including Warren, Kenton, Pike, Daviess and Boone have at least two dozen people employed in the industry.
