Even if there were a usable model to analyze job creation, we are left with the problem of identifying which jobs are actually “green.” A renewable project can result in the employment of technical personnel trained to specialize in operating or maintaining its technology (whom we presume are green), as well as additional bartenders who will help the workers to enjoy their evenings (harder to classify as green).
The matter is important because any type of governmental or private spending might open up slots for bartenders. Renewable technologies, however, have been viewed as the foundation for a massive increase in skilled workers whose human capital will provide them with higher lifelong earnings.
Two recent studies point up that the choice of definitions can affect estimates of the green workforce, and show that an extremely small fraction of jobs defined as green are in renewables.…
Continue Reading[Ed. note: The following is excerpted from Dr. Michaels’s recent testimony before the Subcommittee on Water and Power. Part II tomorrow will examine how green jobs are defined by their proponents.]
It is rapidly becoming apparent that renewable energy is failing to produce the promise of painless prosperity embodied in “green jobs” that will simultaneously decrease unemployment rates and reduce pollution. Begin with some principles:
… Continue Reading1. The proper goal of energy policy is to support the efficient provision of energy.
The lower the cost of energy to the economy, all else equal, the higher will be job creation and economic growth outside of the energy sector. Raising energy costs by forcing the use of uneconomic technologies that create more job slots will have exactly the opposite effect. Put simply, more workers in energy reduce the production of non-energy goods and services.
When I was director of public policy analysis at Enron in the late 1990s, I hired climatologist Gerald North of Texas A&M as a consultant to help me get to the bottom of the raging debate between climate ‘skeptics’ and ‘alarmists.’ I was Ken Lay’s speechwriter, and I was concerned that Enron’s embrace of climate alarmism (we had seven profit centers banking on priced CO2 from government intervention) was intellectually off base and thus violated the honesty plank of corporate responsibility.
It was money well spent. Dr. North was personable and honest, although he had a propensity to default toward alarmism if you did not challenge him. (Such is the neo-Malthusian propensity of most natural scientists who see nature as optimal and the human influence as only downside.) This is why I have called Dr.…
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