Jobs are a cost, not a benefit

We don't quite share the general love of birdchoppers found in certain sections of today's society but we're entirely aware of the various cases for more renewable energy and so on. We can even come up with some interestingly true justifications for such renewables ourselves - certain hydropower projects are rather cheaper and better than spewing coal dust all over the countryside for example. And yet we would still insist that jobs are a cost of doing something, not a benefit, as not everyone in this debate seems to have realised:

A SUBSEA cable to export Scottish wind power to Norway will cost the country jobs and investment, the head of a renewables firm has claimed.

Regulator Ofgem has approved a licence for the construction of a 400-mile underwater power cable linking Scotland and Norway.

The £1.3 billion project will see wind power generated in Scotland sent to Eidfjord in Norway, with hydro energy from that country received in Boddam, Aberdeenshire.

Developers hope the link will be operational by 2022 with connections eventually developed to Iceland.

However, Rod Wood, managing director of Community Windpower, claims Westminster policy means “Scotland will lose out” on jobs and income because of the project – by buying in renewables from overseas instead of supporting the growth of the homegrown sector.

The basic plan seems sensible enough. Send the excess variable windpower from Scotland off to Norway where they will use it to pump water up behind dams. When there's a dearth of windpower in Scotland then the water can be let out again and the electricity delivered to Scotland. Sounds entirely reasonable to us, it's largely the way that the Danes are making their grid work.

But our environmental hero here is insisting that this is not good enough. Rather than using the most efficient method of gaining renewable power he is insisting that instead a more expensive method should be chosen. We know that it will be more expensive - because jobs are an expense, we've actually got to pay people to do these things.

This is a direct argument that the people of Scotland should be poorer. As such of course it's a very bad argument.