A Free-Market Energy Blog

Archive

Posts from December 0

Wind Farms DO NOT Provide Large Economic and Job Benefits (quite the opposite)

By Glenn Schleede -- January 5, 2011

One would think that by now Obama Administration officials would admit that “wind farms” do not provide large economic and job benefits. However, recent Administration statements suggest the delusion continues and, perhaps, that officials do not understand why their expectations are unrealistic.

False expectations may be due to the infamous “JEDI” model (Jobs and Economic Development Impact model) developed for DOE’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) by a wind industry consultant-lobbyist. Unfortunately, this “model”( paid for with our tax dollars) has been widely promoted by NREL and DOE and outputs from the model are used by “wind farm” developers to mislead the public, media, and government officials.

Economic models often produce false or misleading outputs because (a) the model itself is faulty, and/or (b) unrealistic assumptions are “fed into” to model, with the result that the models overstate national, state, and/or local job and other economic benefits.…