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Spain Study: 2.2 Jobs lost for every Renewable Job created

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Coffee and Cake Donating Member (140 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Apr-18-09 09:12 PM
Original message
Spain Study: 2.2 Jobs lost for every Renewable Job created
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: LESSONS FROM THE SPANISH RENEWABLES BUBBLE

Europe’s current policy and strategy for supporting the so-called “green jobs” or renewable energy dates back to 1997, and has become one of the principal justifications for U.S. “green jobs” proposals. Yet an examination of Europe’s experience reveals these policies to be terribly economically counterproductive. This study is important for several reasons. First is that the Spanish experience is considered a leading example to be followed by many policy advocates and politicians. This study marks the very first time a critical analysis of the actual performance and impact has been made. Most important, it demonstrates that the Spanish/EU-style “green jobs” agenda now being promoted in the U.S. in fact destroys jobs, detailing this in terms of jobs destroyed per job created and the net destruction per installed MW. The study’s results demonstrate how such “green jobs” policy clearly hinders Spain’s way out of the current economic crisis, even while U.S. politicians insist that rushing into such a scheme will ease their own emergence from the turmoil.

The following are key points from the study:

1. As President Obama correctly remarked, Spain provides a reference for the establishment of government aid to renewable energy. No other country has given such broad support to the construction and production of electricity through renewable sources. The arguments for Spain’s and Europe’s “green jobs” schemes are the same arguments now made in the U.S., principally that massive public support would produce large numbers of green jobs. The question that this paper answers is “at what price?”

2. Optimistically treating European Commission partially funded data1, we find that for every renewable energy job that the State manages to finance, 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.

3. Therefore, 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” as promised (in addition to the jobs lost due to the opportunity cost of private capital employed in renewable energy), the study clearly reveals the
tendency that the U.S. should expect such an outcome.

4. At minimum, therefore, the study’s evaluation of the Spanish model cited as one for the U.S. to replicate in quick pursuit of “green jobs” serves a note of caution, that the reality is far from what has typically been presented, and that such schemes also offer considerable employment consequences and implications for emerging from the economic crisis.

Read more here:www.juandemariana.org/pdf/090327-employment-public-aid-renewable.pdf
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Thrill Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Apr-18-09 09:18 PM
Response to Original message
1. Whos really behind this? Oil Companies?
Edited on Sat Apr-18-09 09:18 PM by Thrill
scare tactic to keep the U.S at the mercy of Foreign Oil
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Coffee and Cake Donating Member (140 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Apr-18-09 09:32 PM
Response to Reply #1
3. After looking up Calzada, there are some red flags
He has been linked to the Heartland Institution and has received funding from Exxon Mobil in the past.

I should have double checked.
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Laelth Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Apr-18-09 09:56 PM
Response to Reply #3
5. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
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Schema Thing Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Apr-18-09 09:19 PM
Response to Original message
2. Is it via magick? create one job, lose 2.2, because of magick
or just what brand of horse shit are you selling?
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Laelth Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Apr-18-09 09:55 PM
Response to Original message
4. T. Boone Pickens plans to make a boat-load on renewables.
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NightWatcher Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-20-09 11:52 AM
Response to Reply #4
8. T. Boo only wants the water rights to the land where he's begging to put the wind turbines
then he'll sell the water and make billions
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Laelth Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-20-09 01:00 PM
Response to Reply #8
9. He may want the water rights.
But he has said he plans to make a mint from building nearly-useless wind-plants as well. We force utilities to buy the wind energy at higher than market rates (even though the utilities don't want it because it's unpredictable and redundant). Pickens knows how to enrich himself at the public trough, and this opportunity is too good to pass up.

:dem:

-Laelth
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originalpckelly Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Apr-18-09 10:28 PM
Response to Original message
6. The human race is debating where it's going to find the next source of blubber/wood.
Edited on Sat Apr-18-09 10:37 PM by originalpckelly
Right about the time when we're about to find that blubber ain't all it's cracked up to be, because this shit called oil will do the trick without having to hunt it down like a moving whale. That or gas, or coal.

We're so about to build a Dyson ring, and move up the food chain for civilization development. It's just that no one's like, uh duh, that's what we obviously need to do.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere

The ring is the simplest Dyson sphere, and doesn't require some kind of breakthrough in propulsion. We can do it with current technology. Perhaps we'd launch from high altitudes from airships.

If not that, then at least orbital solar power:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-based_solar_power

Or use the same microwave transmission method to get solar energy from airships placed in the stratosphere:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_airship

We can use the envelop of the airship as a reflector, aiming light onto a single point, where it can be converted into electricity.

Wind power is just solar power collected a different way. Hell, even fossil fuels are solar power.
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Laelth Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-20-09 11:50 AM
Response to Reply #6
7. There's not enough matter in the entire Earth to create a Dyson ring.
Where would we get the raw materials to make such a thing?

:dem:

-Laelth
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bemildred Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-20-09 01:13 PM
Response to Original message
10. Yeah, and think of all the jobs computers and automation have cost us.
This is Luddite nonsense.
:rofl::rofl:
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