The sobering real world economic realities for "countries like Spain, Germany and Japan" who "surged ahead"
It's a shame that members of the US Congress that voted for the recent Cap and Trade Climate Bill did not bother to check up on the economic realities which are causing European states to back away from expensive alternative energy commitments and the ‘green job' creation schemes associated with them by inserting all manner of substance-emptying ‘get-out' clauses into EU cap and trade plans.
Germany's Angela Merkel has already insisted on major exemptions for German heavy industry come December's ‘definitive' global climate summit in Copenhagen. Bizarrely, for a so-called ‘Green Chancellor', Merkel's government is also supporting the building of 26 new coal-fired power plants across Germany.
Italy also rocked the EU climate boat by insisting on exemptions for its own energy-intensive industries at the turn of the year. Most significantly, it is an exemption that requires the EU to renegotiate Europe's entire climate policy after the UN summit in December -- effectively, giving Italy a veto. [and after the US has signed up to lunacy without such veto clauses]
In June, deputy head of Poland's Solidarity trade union, Jaroslaw Grzesik, estimated that the EU's climate policy would cost 800,000 European jobs. The think-tank Open Europe has already estimated that the same policies will cost the UK $9 billion a year, leaving an additional 1 million people in poverty by 2020.
Cited as a role model nation by President Obama in Januaray 2009, Spain is the only country to have produced an in-depth analysis of the impact of renewables on the jobs market.
The Study of the effects on employment of public aid to renewable energy sources was published by a team at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos in March, 2009, and though largely ignored by the mainstream press [but not the amateur press*], its findings were damning. Here are just a few:
- "Despite its hyper-aggressive (expensive and extensive) ‘green jobs' policies ... Spain has created a surprisingly low number of jobs."
- "Since 2000 Spain has spent €571,138 ($800K) to create each ‘green job', including subsidies of more than €1million ($1.4million) per wind industry job."
- "The programs creating those jobs also resulted in the destruction of nearly 110,500 jobs elsewhere in the economy or 2.2. jobs destroyed for every ‘green job' created."
- "Each ‘green' megawatt installed destroys 5.28 jobs on average elsewhere in the economy: 8.99 by photovoltaics (solar), 4.27 by wind energy, 5.05 by mini-hydro."
The report concludes, "Policymakers must recognize that because of government action, other jobs are not created." And, most significantly for international consumption, "These costs do not appear to be unique to Spain's approach but instead are largely inherent in schemes to promote renewable energy sources."
If Obama & Co. were to remove their green-tinted glasses for just a moment and take a long hard look at the European experience they profess to cite as ‘proven', they would discover those glasses have been rose-tinted all along.
[Ah, but saving mother Gaia isn't really their objective...]
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Thursday, April 16, 2009
Spain’s green jobs boondoggle
Every “green job” created with government money in Spain over the last eight years came at the cost of 2.2 regular jobs, and only one in10 of the newly created green jobs became a permanent job,
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