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This story was produced through a collaboration between Daily Yonder and Climate Central. Julia Elman (Climate Central) contributed data reporting.
When Olivia Amyette was still a teenager, her grandfather suffered a stroke from which he would never recover. Her need to stay by his side during the worst of the Covid pandemic pushed her into a path after college that led to remarkable success as a clean energy entrepreneur in rural Georgia, where the sector is booming.
When Amyette went off to college to study computer science at Georgia Tech, she''d spend the weekends back home in Lawrenceville, a suburb of Atlanta, taking care of her grandfather. When it was time to graduate, Amyette worried she wouldn''t find a job in the tech industry that was close enough to home. It was the height of the pandemic and too much travel would put her vulnerable grandfather at greater risk of Covid.
That''s when Amyette decided to start her own business.
"With the flexibility that comes with being an entrepreneur, I was able to get the closure that I needed,” Amyette said. “We were all there when he passed away. It was very peaceful."
Jobs and business growth in carbon-free power and other green technologies is stimulating economies across rural Georgia, which is among the frontrunner states attracting these industries. That growth is leading to a scramble to find quality, affordable housing and add other infrastructure to accommodate booming workforces.
The industry’s growth is being fostered in large part by the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), a sweeping spending bill central to President Joe Biden’s economic legacy that aimed to curb inflation and address climate change and healthcare costs, among other things.
"The overall success of the company would not really be likely if the IRA wasn’t in place," said Amyette. "It drives the demand for solar."
Amyette is the owner of two companies, Infinite Energy Advisors, a solar energy company in Cleveland, Georgia, a small town about an hour and a half northeast of Atlanta, and the Solar Knowledge Institute (SKI), a workforce development program that prepares workers for careers in the solar industry.
"I want to make sure that people of all backgrounds have access to high paying jobs, and solar’s a great field for that," said Amyette. "It puts a lot of money in the workers’ pockets."
Solar panel manufacturer QCells employs nearly 1,800 people in Dalton, Georgia, the center of a small metropolitan area in North Georgia, where it produces 30,000 solar panels a day, said company spokesperson Marta Stoepker. The company employs another 750 workers at a plant in the nearby town of Cartersville, population 23,100.
"We have people that come in right from high school, ready to learn," said Stoepker. "But we also employ folks in highly technical positions, like engineers."
Stoepker said a 2024 expansion at the Cartersville plant was powered largely by the IRA, which created tax credits to incentivize the domestic manufacturing of clean energy products. Stoepker said those tax credits gave QCells the confidence to increase their investments in solar. In addition to producing finished solar panels, the Cartersville facility also manufactures some of the materials that go into making the panels, like semiconductive wafers.
When the Cartersville plant is fully operational, Stoepker said QCells expects to produce 8.4 gigawatts of solar in Georgia, a power equal to about 16 million solar panels. In Waynesboro, Georgia, the Vogtle nuclear plant is capable of producing nearly 5 gigawatts, by comparison.
Amyette''s Infinite Energy Advisors also benefited from tax incentives brought on by the IRA.
That''s because the IRA expanded the Investment Tax Credit (ITC) for certain clean energy projects, providing a credit for a portion of the cost to install a solar-energy system, whether it''s a rooftop array on a home or a large solar farm. The incentive provides tax credits from about a quarter to a third during the coming decade.
Unlike some other states, Georgia doesn''t offer consumers one-to-one net metering, a system that provides homes and businesses with solar panels a direct credit for every bit of energy that’s added to the power grid, which provides a powerful incentive in other states to invest in clean energy.
In Georgia, businesses like Amyette''s rely more heavily on tax incentives to grow solar investments.
Georgia ranked in the top five states in the nation for total clean investment from early 2023 to early 2024, with more than half of that $12.4 million going to manufacturing facilities, according to the Clean Investment Monitor, a database of clean energy and climate technology investment projects in the United States assembled by MIT''s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research and the Rhodium Group, an independent research organization.
That investment has created at least 17,421 clean energy jobs across the state, according to Climate Power, a nonprofit that tracks clean energy spending and employment. Rural Georgia has seen 13 projects resulting in over $2.23 billion invested and 3,479 jobs created in the two years since the IRA was enacted.
The IRA also supports local economies by creating workforce development opportunities to train future employees in the clean energy sector. That''s part of what made SKI, Amyette''s new workforce development business, a successful venture.
"The Solar Knowledge Institute grew out of what we at Infinite Energy Advisors saw as major struggles within the workforce and major gaps in how we can effectively address the demand for solar," said Amyette.
SKI is the only apprenticeship program with a specific focus on solar energy construction that''s registered with the Georgia Department of Labor. SKI offers a two-year, 4,000-hour apprenticeship program, which includes a combination of classroom instruction and on the job learning. They also provide a-la-carte courses in topics such as sales, allowing students to tailor their education to their specific interest.
Apprentices are assigned a mentor for the duration of the program, something Amyette said is essential for developing a skilled workforce in the industry. Since it launched in 2022, SKI has trained about 24 individuals, half of whom came from the Cleveland area.
Many of these new investments are landing in communities where they''ll have an outsized impact. Between the QCells Plant and the Hyundai factory, Cartersville is expected to see 5,750 new jobs.
In Dalton, QCells provided economic diversity to a town that had once been a hub for construction and flooring businesses, but whose economy was devastated during the 2008 recession.
"It''s changed the whole character and texture of the community in Dalton," said Mike McLaurin, with Climate Power, the nonprofit tracking IRA investment and job creation. "This is a place that was like a black hole for jobs, but now they''ve opened this huge facility that''s really kind of breathed life into this community."
Dalton residents were excited about the job growth brought on by QCells, said Carl Campbell, executive director of the Dalton Whitfield Joint Development Authority and the vice president of economic development for the Greater Dalton Chamber of Commerce.
"It was a good fit for us," said Campbell.
"But we''re a little bit behind on housing," said Campbell. "We don''t have those large scale home builders you see in bigger communities."
New homes are being bought up and leased as soon as they''re available, according to Campbell. A lot of the newcomers had been commuting to Dalton and only recently were able to buy a house in the community.
As much as the solar industry in Georgia is flourishing, the state is seeing an even greater share of investment in zero-emission vehicles. The state has attracted more than a dozen manufacturing projects for electric vehicles, school buses, and batteries since 2018, according to the Clean Investment Monitor.
That data doesn''t even include a Rivian plant proposed on a 2,000-acre parcel, which the automotive company initially expected to bring into production for its long-range electric SUVs by the end of this year, a plan that''s currently on hold. Georgia''s new Rivian plant will land on a site where four counties meet, and a joint development authority pooled land from all four to create the footprint for a sizable manufacturing facility expected to create 7,500 jobs.
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