Europe’s unrelenting investment in renewable energy, dating back to 1997, that serves as a template for similar US proposals, has the purpose, among others, to create green jobs. However according to a new study there is not much to show for it. In March 2009, Gabriel Calzada Alvarez of Universidad Rey Juan Carlos in Spain released the results of his study on the EU wide creation of green jobs through along these policies. The summary of his examination is equally blunt and devastating, labeling these investments to be “terribly economically counterproductive" after concluding that for every green energy job created:
2.2 on average will be lost, or about nine jobs lost for every four created, to which we have to add those jobs that non-subsidized investments with the same resources would have created.
In addition actually nine out of ten promised green jobs created were not even permanent. To put it in a different way: every green megawatt created:
destroyed 5.28 jobs on average elsewhere in the economy: 8.99 by photovoltaics, 4.27 by wind energy, 5.05 by mini-hydro.
With regard to renewables in Spain, the investment of $36 billion so far created only $10 billion worth in real market prize of energy. Thus renewable mandates have caused already severe damage to the Spanish economy with energy costs increasing nearly 55%. For some companies such as Ferrroatlantico energy cost for its production of iron alloys soared from 37% in 1997 to 43 % in 2005. The escape route for this company of course was the move to nuclear energy saturated France. My best advice these days: spend your days with good Provencal vines and food until the green energy bubble bursts as did the dot.com and the housing bubbles before.
