Recent analysis shows that renewable energy will take over as the cheapest energy source in most countries come 2020. This indicates that a major paradigm shift is underway when it concerns the changes to the energy industry. Trump’s decision to pull the United States out of the Paris Climate Accords manifests as one of the more controversial political decisions of the current year. But even while Trump’s policies favor more traditional methods of generating energy such as from coal or oil, the alternative energy revolution guided by the international market will still result in the U.S. meeting the schedules of the Paris Climate Accords regardless of its position.
Interning at an eco-friendly company nowadays isn’t only a fashionable statement about your concern for the welfare of our natural environment, it’s an act that has significant financial bearing now as well. Let’s take a look at why choosing an eco-friendly company as your place of internship actually has economic implications for your future employment.
The Fall of the Coal Industry
What does the declining coal industry have in store for the energy market as well as its workers? It means that renewable sources of energy will increasingly start to upend the traditional energy market. This will lead to a surplus of opportunities in fields concerned with the extraction and management of renewable energy and a deficit in the more traditional energy markets.
Bloomberg notes that the main cause of the decline of the coal industry has less to do with over-regulation and more to do with stiff competition from more efficient clean energy and natural gas markets.
In the past five years, the market capitalization of the four biggest coal companies dropped from a combined value of $35 billion to less than 1% of that value. Interning for an eco-friendly company is a vote of confidence or an investment in a career that is funded by the growing renewable energy field. Taken another way, it’s jumping off the sinking ship of the coal industry.
Let’s give some more thought to this idea. The expectation here is that eco-friendly companies will have more ties and connections to the renewable energy market and that companies that have significant ties to the coal industry will need to transition to clean energy or risk bankruptcy to stay relevant. It’s completely reasonable to see that a company that prioritizes clean energy as part of its eco-friendly policies will eventually gain a competitive edge over companies that do not primarily utilize clean energy since renewable forms of energy are slated to become cheaper over time.
The Connection Between Clean Energy and Eco-Friendly Policies
The clean energy revolution is also a creative revolution in the sense that new innovations in technology are driving the rapid decline in prices as methods of extracting and gathering solar, wind, or hydroelectric power become more efficient. In fact, a survey with responses from over 2,000 companies revealed that a whopping two-thirds of business people thought that environmental matters were either “significant” or “very significant.” Clearly, environmentalism is a cause that’s on the horizon of the agendas of a multitude of companies whether it represents a genuine effort or a marketing tactic.
It is an obvious truth that for-profit businesses in a capitalistic society will be moved to action and progress by the prospect of capital. The fact of the matter is that the technologies to make renewable energy gathering more efficient are expanding by leaps and bounds every year. Recently, the MIT Technology Review even reports that emerging technology for solar cells to make use of the wasted heat that results from continuous sunlight is becoming a reality: “Because heat is easier to store than electricity, it should be possible to divert excess amounts generated by the device to a thermal storage system, which could then be used to produce electricity even when the sun isn’t shining.”
The bottom line is that companies are embracing eco-friendly policies out of a sense of moral duty or with the intention of seeking economic gain both stand to prosper from the technological advances expected in the following years. As an intern or employee of such companies, you also stand to gain and prosper similarly.
Currently, the rationale behind interning for an eco-friendly company is not only limited to one’s support of environmental awareness anymore – it’s a decision that can be justified from an economic standpoint as well. As the energy revolution speeds up in the next decade, those who diligently intern and work for eco-friendly companies will be the fastest to benefit.