The Real Cost Of Five Million Green Jobs

The website of Barack Obama and Joe Biden promotes the political rhetoric heard often in recent weeks and throughout the last Presidential election campaign.

In fact the Administration's goal to " Invest In A Clean Energy Economy And Create Five Million New Green Jobs " certainly seems like a worthwhile political plan. The plan sounded so appealing on the campaign trail last fall that Republican candidate John McCain also intended for the government to create millions of “green jobs”.

After all, with the unemployment rate in America now above 8 percent and growing each month, the prospect of the federal government creating five million new jobs through subsidizing renewable energy in the United States is considered by many to be an important plan to put unemployed Americans back to work.

So, the President's 2010 budget proposal contains a $20 billion dollar investment in tax incentives for clean-energy programs. The problem is that this "investment" in the new clean energy economy may actually increase the unemployment rate and cost America more than twice the amount of jobs that it actually creates.

That is the dubious conclusion of a study from King Juan Carlos University in Madrid based on Spain's experience with converting from burning fossil fuels to alternative energy. In Spain, wind turbines provided 11 percent of power demand last year. These "green" generators earn rates as much as 11 times more for renewable energy compared with burning fossil fuels.

The higher premiums paid for solar, biomass, wave and wind power are charged to consumers in their bills and translated into a $774,000 cost for each Spanish “green job” created since 2000, said Gabriel Calzada, an economics professor at the university and author of the report.

Meanwhile, for every new position that depends on energy price supports, at least 2.2 jobs in other industries disappeared. In addition, the University of Madrid study found that the loss of jobs could actually be higher, as companies relocate in search of cheaper energy elsewhere.

The truth is that Obama's five million green jobs initiative is based on questionable science and dubious economics. The hope is that through government regulations, subsidies, and renewable-power mandates, armies of green workers will build tens of thousands of windmills and capture energy through the building of solar-power installations. These future government sponsored green jobs would also need to increase the power lines to allow the U.S. power grid to incorporate a major expansion of intermittent energy.

But what then happens to private sector jobs in coal, nuclear, oil and the automotive industries? According to the study from the University of Madrid, massive job loss in these industries would be the result. There would be more than two jobs lost for every job created. The cost to the consumer for this new subsidized alternative energy would be much higher as well.

Of course, a higher national unemployment rate and more expensive energy for the consumer is not mentioned as a result of the government creation of five million green jobs on the Obama web site or in all the environmental and economic political rhetoric.

Indeed, the real cost of an expansive new government multi billion dollar program never is.

http://www.eworldvu.com