OK, a diligent reader writes in with the explanation.

Gore and Moon are using misleading, bogus information, as documented by the Christian Science Monitor. Here is an excerpt from the CSM:

Earlier this week, Fortune’s eco-blog, Green Wombat, ran a story under the headline, “Wind jobs outstrip the coal industry.”

Blogger Todd Woody cites new report from the American Wind Energy Association that about 85,000 people are now employed by the wind power industry, up from 50,000 a year ago. Mr. Woody then says that “the coal industry employs about 81,000 workers,” citing a 2007 report from the Department of Energy.

Woody calls this comparison “a talking point in the green jobs debate.”

The story was republished on the Huffington Post, cited by Mother Jones magazine, and has been bouncing around the green blogosphere for the past few days.

But it’s a bogus comparison. According to the wind energy report, those 85,000 jobs in wind power are as “varied as turbine component manufacturing, construction and installation of wind turbines, wind turbine operations and maintenance, legal and marketing services, and more.” The 81,000 coal jobs counted by the Department of Energy are only miners. Their figure excludes those who haul the coal around the country, as well as those who work in coal power plants.

It is a good thing that it is not true, as the CSM write, “If it really took that many people to provide so little wind energy, it would never become competitive with fossil fuels.”

ORIGINAL POST BELOW

Yesterday’s FT had a largely forgettable op-ed by Al Gore and Ban Ki-Moon on green aspects of economic stimulus packages. However, it did have this interesting statement that caught my attention:

In the US, there are now more jobs in the wind industry than in the entire coal industry.

First, is this in fact true?

Second, if it is true, how can it be that wind can ever be cost competitive with coal? Consider that coal, according to the US EIA was responsible for generating 155,000 thousand megawatt-hours of energy production in November, 2008. Wind was responsible for 1,300 thousand megawatt hours. This means that the US saw about 120 times as much energy produced from coal as wind. If it takes more employees to generate 0.8% of the energy as coal produces, how can it ever be cost competitive?

Something does not add up. Someone please explain this.