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Commentary By Max Schulz

How Much Does a Green Job Cost?

How much does a green job cost? During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama promised his administration would spend $150 billion over the course of a decade to create 5 million new green jobs. While most commentators focused on the impressive-sounding 5 million figure, my attention was drawn to the other number, which means Obama calculates it will cost taxpayers $30,000 to create each new job.

Obama’s guess is modest compared to what other advocates claim it will cost to “create” jobs. The Center for American Progress estimated last year that federal outlays of $100 billion over a two year period would create two million green jobs, or roughly one new position for every $50,000 spent by taxpayers. The Apollo Alliance, whose board has long featured Van Jones, the new White House green jobs coordinator, estimates it would take $500 billion (roughly 20 times the annual budget of the entire U.S. Department of Energy) to create five million jobs, a cost of $100,000 per job.

If new green employment makes sense for the economy, as advocates suggest, then why should there be a high public price tag on creating these jobs? And can anyone really trust these numbers? An Apollo Alliance official all but admitted to the Wall Street Journal that its figures were plucked out of the air. Asked to explain the vast discrepancy between Obama’s expensive jobs figure with the Apollo Alliance’s three-times-more expensive figure, the official replied, “Honestly, it’s just to inspire people.” <A HREF="https://a.tribalfusion.com/h.click/aImNnATT3lQqQHQc7IPUupPtn7UGrQ2Fmvnteq..." TARGET="_blank"><IMG SRC=https://cdn5.tribalfusion.com/media/1560436/300x250_YGE.gif WIDTH=300 HEIGHT=250 BORDER=0></A>

Feeling inspired? Taking liberties with the numbers seems to be a key component of the Obama energy agenda. His green jobs plan paradoxically suggests there is economic benefit to switching away from inexpensive carbon-based fuels and toward far pricier renewable energy technologies. Highlighting job creation focuses on the supposed upside of his green strategy.

It turns out there is a downside as well. Spain, which instituted an ambitious green jobs program a decade ago, found out the hard way, and now we have evidence of the real cost of creating green jobs. A study by researchers at King Juan Carlos University found that 2.2 jobs were destroyed for every green job manufactured through government mechanisms. Moreover, only one in ten of those green jobs will be permanent. Ironically, Obama has touted the Spanish experience as a model for the United States. But the authors deem Spain’s policies “terribly economically counterproductive.” Simply put, they wrote, “the Spanish/EU-style ‘green jobs’ agenda now being promoted in the U.S. in fact destroys jobs.”

How come? The left’s green jobs projections don’t factor in the costs to the economy of trying to force a wholesale switch to renewable energy technologies that are considerably more expensive than the oil, natural gas, coal, and uranium we rely upon today to meet about 95 percent of our energy needs.

Wind, solar, biomass, and other so-called green sources of energy operate on the fringes of our energy economy precisely because they are more expensive and less reliable. And this comes despite decades of generous subsidies.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration calculates that taxpayers subsidize solar and wind energy at more than $23 per megawatt-hour of electricity produced. Yet they are still too costly to be competitive: Combined, they produce less than one percent of the nation’s power. Compare the green subsidies to the energy sources reviled by environmentalists, such as natural gas (25 cents per MWh in subsidies), coal (44 cents), hydroelectricity (67 cents), and nuclear power ($1.59).

Even with massive new infusions of government cash, there’s only so far renewables can come down the cost curve. The energy sources they seek to harness are diffuse and diluted, requiring huge amounts of space to offer what coal or gasoline or especially uranium offer in relatively small packages. Forcing Americans to get their energy from more expensive sources will -- no surprise -- drive up costs all across the board. And higher energy costs usually mean job losses, particularly in energy-intensive industries like heavy manufacturing.

In Washington’s blinkered calculus, perhaps each unemployed factory worker can transition to a job installing solar panels. But that would only replace efficient sources and uses of energy with inefficient ones. It wouldn’t create wealth.

This piece originally appeared in Human Events Online

This piece originally appeared in Human Events Online