"Robots are coming, and they're on a mission: Install solar panels,"

The companies racing to build large solar farms across the United States are facing a growing problem: Not enough workers.

Now, they’re turning to robots for help.

On Tuesday, AES Corporation, one of the country’s biggest renewable energy companies, introduced a first-of-its-kind robot that can lug around and install the thousands of heavy panels that typically make up a large solar array. AES said its robot, nicknamed Maximo, would ultimately be able to install solar panels twice as fast as humans can and at half the cost...

It’s part of a growing trend: Energy companies want to use automation to overcome worker shortages, cut costs and speed up the construction of large solar farms, which has traditionally been very labor-intensive. Without drastic changes, these companies say, it will be impossible to deploy solar power fast enough to tackle global warming and meet the country’s rapidly growing need for electricity...

The interest in automation comes as President Biden and other politicians have said that a boom in clean energy could create millions of jobs...

“Whenever automation comes up, there’s always this push and pull,” said Katie Harris, vice president of federal affairs at the BlueGreen Alliance, a partnership of labor unions and environmental groups. “It can help folks be more productive, but we also want to create good-paying union jobs, and automation isn’t always a friend there.”...

The Laborers’ International Union of North America, one of the country’s largest construction unions, did not respond to a request for comment.

Ms. Harris, of the BlueGreen Alliance, said she was skeptical that even rapid automation would fully fix the looming shortage of clean-energy workers and that policymakers would still need to invest in training and apprenticeship programs.

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[Refers to AES, Built Robotics & Terabase.]