Renewable Energy and the Job Market
I spent a bit of time on the website of the Bureau of Labor Statistics in preparation for today’s post, looking at some numbers surrounding employment in the US. Here are a few approximate numbers that I feel are relevant:
Unemployed people looking for work with skills appropriate to (or who could be easily trained for) designing and building renewable energy systems: 3 million
Highschool and college graduates entering the workforce over the coming five years with these skills who will find it hard to find work given the current and foreseeable economic climate: 12 million
People working in fossil fuel industries, e.g., coal miners, who may be well advised to look for work elsewhere as the world moves — at whatever pace — to clean energy: 2 million
Total of above: 17 million
Now, let me offer this high-level summary of the subsidies bestowed onto Big Energy in the US. It is estimated that the US oil and gas industry receives anywhere from $1 billion to $35 billion a year in subsidies from taxpayers. What, you ask? Don’t we know that number with any greater degree of accuracy? No. The exact number is extremely hard to nail down — even for those who try to do it honestly and objectively — given the 10-or-so different programs (loans, deliberately lax legislation and enforcement, tax breaks at many different levels, etc.) that could be referred to as subsidies for fossil fuels. But it’s substantial by any account.
And in some cases it’s more egregious than others. For example, we taxpayers pay up to 90% of the cost of building nuclear power plants; the nuclear industry couldn’t stand on its own for a nano-second. And to me, the mega-billion dollar subsidy for corn ethanol is even more galling. As I’ve written abundantly elsewhere, corn ethanol will down in history as one of the biggest rip-offs ever perpetrated on the American public.
So here’s a simple suggestion: if we’re going to subsidize something, why can’t it be something that contributes to the public good? Why does it have to cause cancer, jeopardize national security, promote terrorism, stimulate global warming, or cause a dangerous waste situation that will last hundreds of thousands of years?
Why not consider this: PULL the subsidies for oil, coal, corn ethanol and nuclear. Create a level playing field, and see how long fossil fuel businesses last in a fair, competitive environment (about 10 minutes).
Or, if you want to do something progressive, direct that money to renewable energy. Where do you think we’d be right now in the maturation of — you pick it — solar thermal, hydrokinetics, wind, etc. – if we had had the wisdom and the courage to send that money into research and development of those technologies, as opposed to merely making Big Energy even Bigger?
Let’s make a change here. Per the numbers above, there are 17 million people who will thank us immediately — not to mention the billions of other people on earth today — and those of future generations — who will be beneficiaries as well.
You are right, and you assume that disinterested legislatures committed to the social welfare and health of the public are at work. But the obscene truth is that the federal legislature is now controlled by the pharmaceutical, fossil fuel, factory farm, and large bank industries. And until adequate, compulsory public financing of campaigns is passed, this will continue to be the case.
And, of course, if the money for subsidizing corn and the fossil fuel and atomic energy industries were redirected to erecting more wind generators and sun generators, and building the grid links, all 17 million would be employed. But who is going to carry out such a policy?
I hate to be a one-solution repetitive parrot, but your article once again calls for the simplest solution of all: get rid of the income tax system and install the FairTax (HR25). Double the rate to 50% or so, and put ALL government costs at the place where consumption decisions are made: the cash register. Let people actually choose NOT to use so much money.
No subsidies, no tax loopholes, no hidden taxes. Let the ‘green’ energy compete evenly with everyone else when people use a lot less of it, instead of encouraging growth based on ‘green’ consumption vs. ‘black’ consumption. One of the biggest arguments against wind or solar is that they can’t make up the difference for oil production declines. The solution isn’t to make wind and solar bigger, but to reduce demand in the first place.
Consumption for consumption’s sake is wrong. That’s where the disincentive needs to be: on everything, not just carbon or gasoline or cigarettes or soda pop. Everything that involves the transfer of money needs to be taxed heavily so that people stop looking up for solutions and start looking down to the soil and across to their neighbors for things to serve.
The Myth of Progress is just that.
This is one positive thing about the corn ethanol subsidies. Commercial beekeepers, the ones suffering from Colony Collapse Syndrome[CCS], feed their bees High Fructose Corn Syrup[HFCS]. If you saw what HFCS does to a bee’s gut, you would be reading the small print on EVery thing you eat..
Since the ethanol paid more than the commercial beekeepers paid for HFCS, the price of HFCS went up, commercial beekeepers bought less and CCS went down!
An expensive way to deal with something no one dare mention in the first place, but some yields should go up – GMO fields excepted.
The only form of energy that will solve our energy problems and eliminate pollution is nuclear energy.
Unfortunately, the media have not provided us with correct and current information on nuclear energy. What is often considered nuclear waste is not waste; it is actually unused nuclear fuel. We are using a very wasteful and obsolete nuclear technology. With better nuclear technology, the amount of “waste” generated would be about 0.05% of the nuclear waste which we are presently generating.
I suggest that people do their OWN research on energy. To start, I recommend the following books:
Prescription for the Planet by Tom Bless
The Nuclear Economy by Zachary Moitoza
Also, visit the web site http://www.energyfromthorium.com/ which explains how thorium can be used instead of uranium in reactors.
To learn more about solar and other sources of energy, visit
http://www.terrestrialenergy.org/ which explains how, with very radical changes in how we live, which would require the government to take draconian measures to enforce, we could get by with renewable energy sources.
Also note that there are literally dozens of types of nuclear reactors, many of which do not cause the various problems to which people rightly object.
Two wrongs don’t make a right! One penny of subsidies or $$ from American Citzens to any industry is wrong….pure theft and immoral. Subsidies is just another example of corruption that we need to weed out of Washington DC and the European socialistic mentallity. This Green Energy Blog idea that suggests that we should transfer the theft to another group of people is also just as immoral. I suspect the subsidies to the “evil” corporations were actually for R&D in alternative cleaner-greener technologies. The tree hugger mentality that oil, coal, and nuclear use are evil and dirty is also wrong and pure ignorance. The scare tactics are such a joke as is global warming and CO2 issue which we now see was a bog hoax to try to gain control for their ideas for a clean planet. We just need to use the earth’s fossil & material resources in a clean and responsible way which is feasible and economical as the world has proven and is a reality today. In the 70’s the tree huggers said we would be out of fossil fuels by the year 2000…the truth is we have no clue how much there really is. Energy solutions is not one size fits all. The true answer is to allow the free market to solve our needs but just make sure we do not harm humans with excessive pollution. Good energy solutions are in place today with multiple solutions that coexist…cleaner cars that still burn oil and gasoline, clean nuclear power with high recycle rate and little waste, expansion in use of wind power where feasible, solar expansion, etc. Longer term hopefully mankind will find low cost ways to produce hydrogen and control fusion and we will be just fine. We need to get big government and idealogue environmentalists out of the way and let innovative private companies and consumers (the people) lead the way. Focus on true facts and economical innovation. Also, give the people back their $35 billion and let them buy products, services, and energy that they think is best.
Hi Craig,
Thanks for the insightful article and general overview. I’m one of those statistics you mentioned currently unemployed due to outsourcing. I am making a conscious effort to change my career and gear it to greener horizons (pun intended).
I’ve just gotten my BPI Building Analyst certification training and that has opened my eyes. I have been busy these past two months talking to folks in the field, where the rubber meets the road, and green jobs are heavily subsidized too. So are you saying take all subsidies away including much of the economic stimulus money being invested state by state to improve energy efficiency and job creation, or turn it over to only such efforts exclusively?
Given the boot camp reality I’ve experienced to date the so called green jobs being created by stimulus funds are mostly benefiting the principles of smaller businesses and not the displaced worker like myself. The so called green jobs are not generally that well paying even after taking certification classes. My experience after completing them is that there is a subterfuge of arrogance in the field that if you don’t have the history behind the certification then you are an outsider.
So although I agree with your sentiment in concept it is not translating very well in practice. My home state of is under pressure to spend $62 million in federal funds in two years for green job creation and training for jobs that pay between $12.50 to $18.50 an hour. Where I live this amounts to just pay rent OR buy food, medical and utility bills, but certainly not both. To add injury to insult our state’s utility commission has to figure out how to spend $123 million on building efficiency which gets awarded to subcontractors who hire those low payed hourly workers and pocket the profits.
So I think what needs to be investigated is how these funds get spread into our economy and if it is really benefiting Main St, meaning the unemployed, not Main St. the business owner who is not compensating these newly trained workers with a living wage. I realize my commentary goes down deep into the trenches, beyond what the intent of your article is meant to penetrate, but it is important that punditry properly puts the big picture in context to the impact it has to the lives of individuals.
Community colleges, private instructional facilities, building contractors and related businesses are sucking up federal dollars, but how is that former professional employee or freshly minted college graduate going to benefit from “green jobs” that pay below subsistence wages? We could argue that professional skills are transferable, but my experience has been that employers of “green professionals” are basically “highly selective” and not willing to consider cross pollination of professional skills.
I hear you and support you, but if green is going to make a difference in the job market then there needs to be an attitude adjustment and a provision for fair wages in that industry.
Hi, Sonny. Re: subsidies, I’m just observing that if they were ALL removed, and if ALL the costs of fossil fuels (the “externalities”) were paid by the producers and consumers of the energy that derives from those sources, we’d have ubiquitous renewable energy virtually overnight. They would become the bargain of the century, and money would flock into all the disciplines you mention here.
Subsidizations, tariffs, etc. are a complex and tricky business. They might in fact be so complex that they cannot be implemented through political process. Most of us, myself included, are usually tempted to believe we could get right. Perhaps. My intuition suggests that we don’t need a set of guidelines as badly as we need adaptive processes – the ability to react in an agile manner to the subtle missteps that inevitably occur.
Anyone who has done enterprise level business knows that it is impossible to get a brand new sector off the ground in a purely free market income/expense model, i.e. your product or service completely covers the operational expenses early in the product lifecycle. There is inevitably a “burn” in the initial years that requires a long term view of the capitalization and the operational. The problem with energy economies of any sort, other than the status quo, is that no one company can make that leap, regardless of their “vision”. That’s where governments come in.
Only a government can level the playing field of business within its borders AND have the foresight to steer the ship away from tumultuous endings, i.e. what happens when oil is sufficiently scarce as to influence the owners of that resource to engage in tectonic policy shifts rather than the normal progressive sort. Before governments got engaged in this kind of thinking, we used to hit the wall hard, so to speak, and then make the bottom up changes in a distributed way. The problem of course, is that for some issues, that wall *really* hurts. The curse of the industrialized, technologically dependent modern society.
I don’t claim to know how to do it, but everything I know suggests that a paradigm shift in how humanity provides energy for its continued existence, is a subject of our world governance mechanisms.
Removing all subsidies for fossil fuels could lead quickly to the cost of fuel for cars reaching $15 per gallon if we use the same fuel. What a social crisis that would create. Listen to Frank Eggers, who has the right idea about the nuclear choice. In so many blogs, those who oppose nuclear energy seem not to know many facts about the nuclear benefits. Many claims made against nuclear simply spread misinformation. Please study the nuclear choice. Don’t go solo on your personal opinion. Nuclear has been doing quite well for over half a century in this country and elsewhere. Nuclear can solve many energy problems to include waste management; development of hydrogen as a fuel; greater use beyond subs, aircraft carriers, and space devices; and providing safe and inexpensive energy for supplying a source of potable water. We must understand the nuclear choice. We have enough “clean” nuclear fuel to last millennia. That’s better than being renewable. Remember, it is the planet and its inhabitants we stand to lose if we neglect this energy choice that is gift from the great minds of science. We ignore this source of knowledge at our peril. If you can’t see this nuclear choice as a gift, please read more.
Paul Taylor