Green Jobs: Fast-tracking Economic Suicide

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."
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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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imag toon - grn engry - C&T pills: over 47M bought it

Spain’s green jobs boondoggle

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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 in 10 of the newly created green jobs became a permanent job, says a new study released this month. The study draws parallels with the green jobs programs of the Obama administration.

President Obama, in fact, has used Spain’s green initiative as a blueprint for how the United States should use federal funds to stimulate the economy. Obama’s economic stimulus package,which Congress passed in February, allocates billions of dollars to the green jobs industry.

But the author of the study, Dr. Gabriel Calzada, an economics professor at Juan Carlos University in Madrid, said the United States should expect results similar to those in Spain:

“Spain’s experience (cited by President Obama as a model) reveals with high confidence, by two different methods, that the U.S. should expect a loss of at least 2.2 jobs on average, or about 9 jobs lost for every 4 created, to which we have to add those jobs that non-subsidized investments with the same resources would have created,”

wrote Calzada in his report: Study of the Effects on Employment of Public Aid to Renewable Energy Sources.

[Get it? "BOON-DOG-GLE" ]

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Deeper In Red From Going Green

Recession: The administration tells the country it can revive the economy with a "green" stimulus. But, like government-provided universal health care, where it's been tried in another nation, it hasn't worked. [snip]

"An examination of Europe's experience" in trying to green the economy, which dates back to 1997, "reveals these policies to be terribly economically counterproductive."

That the European experience has been economically counterproductive should be no mystery. Creating jobs through government dictate always carries cost. Since there is little market for the green programs that are supposed to pull us out of our economic tailspin, those jobs have to be financed by taking money out of the private sector, where it could be used for genuine investments that would generate honest, not taxpayer-subsidized, jobs.

Spain is to the proponents of a green economy what Britain and Canada are to the supporters of state-provided universal health care: a model that the U.S. should follow. The president himself has brought up Spain as an example of the value of government promoting renewable energy.

Before mentioning Spain, or any other nation, again — and certainly before he proposes any further green initiatives — he should read Alvarez's report. He would need to go no further into the paper than the third of Alvarez's 24 salient points:

"While it is not possible to directly translate Spain's experience with exactitude to claim that the U.S. would lose at least 6.6 million to 11 million jobs, as a direct consequence were it to actually create 3 to 5 million 'green jobs' . . . the study clearly reveals the tendency that the U.S. should expect such an outcome."

Alvarez said in an interview that the job losses "could be greater if you account for the amount of lost industry that moves out of the country due to higher energy prices," which companies have done.

Facts, as has been said, are stubborn things. But they are scarcely more stubborn than most minds on the political left that ignore immutable economic laws and well-documented economic history.

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image toon - grn engry = new green power jolts the wallet

Spanish paper: Obama driving off ‘green energy’ cliff

Subject: txt hots - grn engry -
Chris Horner has been all over the story of Spain’s unimpressive experience with green energy. Spanish newspapers have finally called out the U.S. President for choosing a failed model for a “Green Economy.” From the other day:

On eight separate occasions, President Barack Obama has referred to the “green economy” policies enacted by Spain as being the model for what he envisioned for America.

Later came the revelation that Obama administration senior Energy Department official Cathy Zoi — someone with serious publicized conflict of interest issues — demanded an urgent U.S. response to the damaging report from the non-governmental Spanish experts so as to protect the Obama administration’s plans…But today’s leaked document reveals that even the socialist Spanish government now acknowledges the ruinous effects of green economic policy.

Now the Spanish press is on to the story. Buried on page 34 of today’s Gaceta is this headline:

Spain admits that the “green economy” it sold to Obama is a bust
Spanish government leaks a report acknowledging the grave economic consequences of betting on renewable energy

The first few lines:

The president of the United States, Barack Obama, does not appear to have chosen well in basing his “green economy” on Spain’s. After the government of Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero demonized a study by various experts on the economic downsides of renewable energies, it just leaked an internal document from the Spanish cabinet which is even more negative...

Among the findings, paraphrased from the right sidebar:

• Green energy is 120 percent more expensive, simply due to the extra costs of solar and wind, and the evolution of the market is not going to bring down those costs any time soon.
• The clean energy sector is slated to receive 126 billion euros in the next 25 years, but no one knows where the money is going to come from . In 2009, the subsidies were worth 5 billion euros.
• Photovoltaic solar power accounts for 53 percent of the extra cost of renewables, whereas it produces only 11 percent of Spain’s renewable energy.
• Each “green job” comes at the expense of 2.2 traditional jobs.

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EUROPEAN HOT AIR

Restrictions on greenhouse-gas emissions involve huge costs for uncertain gains and are just what economies in recession don't need.

Western European leaders are the latest to discover that climate-change talk is cheap, but carbon-emissions regulation is expensive. That might be bad news for green activists, but it could be very good news for Europeans worried about their jobs and their economy, says the Wall Street Journal.

Governments in industry-heavy countries are now less willing to sacrifice jobs for cooler temperatures:

• Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel insisted on exemptions for her country's industry from December's European Union (EU) climate package, which pledged to reduce carbon emissions by 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020.
• Germany also plans to build several dozen coal-fired power plants in the next few years.

Additionally:

• Italy insisted on a clause in the December climate deal that requires the EU to renegotiate its climate policy after the United Nations summit in Copenhagen later this year. [I.e., get the good press, then renege]
  
• Any renegotiated EU deal is likely to contain even more loopholes and exemptions to keep from denting European competitiveness.

In December, Phillipe Varin, chief executive of Corus, Europe's second-largest steel producer, told the London Independent that the cost of carbon credits and new technologies needed to reduce emissions would destroy European steel production, forcing manufacturing overseas, costing 800,000 European jobs.

Before the December negotiations, the London-based think tank Open Europe estimated the EU climate package would cost governments, businesses and householders in the EU-25 more than $102 - billion - a year -.

A recent paper by Gabriel Calzada Álvarez, an economics professor at Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, said that since Spain started investing in "green jobs" policies in 2000, the country has lost 110,500 jobs in other parts of the economy. That amounts to 2.2 jobs lost for every new "green job" created.

A global slowdown and an increasing body of evidence is forcing a rethink on whether emissions control is worth the cost...

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