Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 07/24/2009 10:13:28 AM PDT by curth
In response to Sarah Palin’s July 14th Washington Post op-ed, Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Barbara Boxer (D-CA), in their own WaPo op-ed, write they want to “put facts ahead of fiction and real debate ahead of rhetorical bomb-throwing.” Senators Kerry and Boxer will likely be the co-sponsors for the Senate bill to accompany the Waxman-Markey bill passed in the House June 26th.
Kerry and Boxer first refute Palin’s claim that job losses are all but certain. Boxer and Kerry assert that investing billions of dollars in clean energy will jumpstart the economy by creating millions of jobs. They point to a recent report by Robert Pollin, James Heintz and Heidi Garrett-Peltier of the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) that says the bill will create more than 1.7 million jobs.
Heritage economist Karen Campbell dismantles the PERI study saying: “The study investigates the question of how many jobs would be needed if $150 billion were invested in clean energy over the next 10 years versus how many jobs would be needed if the same amount were invested in carbon-based energy industries. This is not any policy currently being debated today, and therefore is irrelevant to the debate. Secondly, this tells us nothing about the overall economic effect of borrowing money and using it to build clean energy capacity. Instead, they assume the money comes from a helicopter drop in the sky. While the methodology of the study tells us nothing about overall job creation, it did quite effectively demonstrate that it takes 2.5 million workers to get the same amount of energy from renewable fuel that 800,000 workers produce using carbon-based fuel.
(Excerpt) Read more at blog.heritage.org ...
The libs are TERRIFIED of Sarah, they know she will rally Conservatives and we will kick this Marxist crap out of office
What Senators Kerry and Boxer Got Wrong About Energy and Cap and Trade
EVERYTHING.
Kerry and Boxers position is based solely on politics and power and have nothing to do with energy or what is good for America.
Subsidizing renewable energy in the U.S. may destroy two jobs for every one created if Spain’s experience with windmills and solar farms is any guide. For every new position that depends on energy price supports, at least 2.2 jobs in other industries will disappear, according to a study from King Juan Carlos University in Madrid.
Below I post the executive summary of the Spanish report (in English). It is a long read, but worth it!! Remember this is a study from a country which has already implemented a lot of the policies Zero and the DIms want to implement in the US, and not a study of how the future may work out:
Executive summary of the report:
Study of the effects on employment of public aid to renewable energy sources
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 data(1), 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.
(1 )The MITRE project was partially funded by DG TREN (Energy & Transport) of the European Commission under the Altener programme. Study about the effects on employment of public aid to renewable energy sources
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.
5. Despite its hyper-aggressive (expensive and extensive) “green jobs” policies it appears that Spain likely has created a surprisingly low number of jobs, two-thirds of which came in construction, fabrication and installation, one quarter in administrative positions, marketing and projects engineering, and just one out of ten jobs has been created at the more permanent level of actual operation and maintenance of the renewable sources of electricity.
6. This came at great financial cost as well as cost in terms of jobs destroyed elsewhere in the economy.
7. The study calculates that since 2000 Spain spent €571,138 to create each “green job”, including subsidies of more than €1 million per wind industry job.
8. The study calculates that 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.
9. Principally, the high cost of electricity affects costs of production and employment levels in metallurgy, non-metallic mining and food processing, beverage and tobacco industries.
10. Each “green” megawatt installed destroys 5.28 jobs on average elsewhere in the economy: 8.99 by photovoltaics, 4.27 by wind energy, 5.05 by mini-hydro.
11. These costs do not appear to be unique to Spain’s approach but instead are largely inherent in schemes to promote renewable energy sources.
12. The total over-cost – the amount paid over the cost that would result from buying the electricity generated by the renewable power plants at the market price - that has been incurred from 2000 to 2008 (adjusting by 4% and calculating its net present value [NPV] in 2008), amounts to 7,918.54 million Euros (appx. $10 billion USD)
13. The total subsidy spent and committed (NPV adjusted by 4%) to these three renewable sources amounts to 28,671 million euros ($36 billion USD).
Executive Summary: Lessons from the Spanish renewables bubble
14. The price of a comprehensive electricity rate (paid by the end consumer) in Spain would have to be increased 31% to being able to repay the historic debt generated by this rate deficit mainly produced by the subsidies to renewables, according to Spain’s energy regulator.
15. Spanish citizens must therefore cope with either an increase of electricity rates or increased taxes (and public deficit), as will the U.S. if it follows Spain’s model.
16. The high cost of electricity due to the green job policy tends to drive the relatively most electricity-intensive companies and industries away, seeking areas where costs are lower. The example of Acerinox is just such a case.
17. The study offers a caution against a certain form of green energy mandate. Minimum guaranteed prices generate surpluses that are difficult to manage. In Spain’s case, the minimum electricity prices for renewable-generated electricity, far above market prices, wasted a vast amount of capital that could have been otherwise economically allocated in other sectors. Arbitrary, state-established price systems inherent in “green energy” schemes leave the subsidized renewable industry hanging by a very weak thread and, it appears, doomed to dramatic adjustments that will include massive unemployment, loss of capital, dismantlement of productive facilities and perpetuation of inefficient ones.
18. These schemes create serious “bubble” potential, as Spain is now discovering. The most paradigmatic bubble case can be found in the photovoltaic industry. Even with subsidy schemes leaving the mean sale price of electricity generated from solar photovoltaic power 7 times higher than the mean price of the pool, solar failed even to reach 1% of Spain’s total electricity production in 2008.
19. The energy future has been jeopardized by the current state of wind or photovoltaic technology (more expensive and less efficient than conventional energy sources). These policies will leave Spain saddled with and further artificially perpetuating obsolete fixed assets, far less productive than cutting edge technologies, the soaring rates for which soon-to-be obsolete assets the government has committed to maintain at high levels during their lifetime.
20. The regulator should consider whether citizens and companies need expensive and inefficient energy – a factor of production usable in virtually every human project- or affordable energy to help overcome the economic crisis instead.
21. The Spanish system also jeopardizes conventional electricity facilities, which are the first to deal with the electricity tariff deficit that the State owes them.
22. Renewable technologies remained the beneficiaries of new credit while others began to struggle, though this was solely due to subsidies, mandates and related programs. As soon as subsequent programmatic changes take effect which became necessary due to “unsustainable” solar growth its credit will also cease.
23. This proves that the only way for the “renewables” sector - which was never feasible by itself on the basis of consumer demand - to be “countercyclical” in crisis periods is also via government subsidies. These schemes create a bubble,
which is boosted as soon as investors find in “renewables” one of the few profitable sectors while when fleeing other investments. Yet it is axiomatic, as we are seeing now, that when crisis arises, the Government cannot afford this growing subsidy cost either, and finally must penalize the artificial renewable industries which then face collapse.
24. Renewables consume enormous taxpayer resources. In Spain, the average annuity payable to renewables is equivalent to 4.35% of all VAT collected, 3.45% of the household income tax, or 5.6% of the corporate income tax for 2007.
Besides EVERYTHING, you mean??
The fact that it’s even Boxer and Kerry responding tells you something right there. It’s the equivalent of fielding a Pop Warner football team against the Steelers.
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