I keep hearing green collar jobs are the wave of the future. The kind of employment that will only grow and as President Obama likes to say, “can’t be outsourced.” This month, BP closed a solar-cell factory in Madrid, laying off 480 workers. Spain is the country that President Obama cites as his role model for the Green Jobs Revolution.
So what’s going on in Spain? A study that was released last month by researchers at Universidad Rey Juan Carlos demonstrate that each job created in Spain’s renewables industry costs as much as 2.2 jobs elsewhere in the economy. These lost jobs have a real impact, particularly when employment rolls are shrinking elsewhere.
The government subsidized jobs in Spain’s solar, wind and hydroelectric power industries to the tune of $30 billion, and that figure only includes the extra cost to energy consumers being forced by the government to buy renewable energy at prices several times higher than market rates for conventional power. The 30 billion doesn’t include direct subsidies, such as grants, to build solar farms.
In 2004 Spain’s socialist government guaranteed a huge return on any investment in solar, wind or hydro. It was done by requiring electricity distributers to buy all renewable energy produced in the country at prices that have been 10 times higher than market rates. The government set a regulated price for solar power of 575% of market rates for small producers and “only” 300% for larger ones. The results were a series of inefficient solar farms small enough to get the higher subsidy. Builders, real estate companies, hotel groups and truck manufacturers got in on the action.
In 2007 the government tweaked the subsidy schedule, yet the mandated prices were still so generous that 85% of all solar-powered generating capacity due by 2010 was already in place.
To rein in the market, Madrid passed another law that sharply reduced incentives to build new solar capacity. In the past, two-thirds of the roughly 50,000 jobs created in renewables have been in construction, manufacturing and installation. Because the previous growth can’t be maintained, about 15,000 solar job losses in just a few months has occurred.
Spain’s policy shows that green dreams like renewable energy are achievable only through massive transfers of money from productive sectors to those seeking to get rich quick thanks to government mandates. The few jobs created greatly depend on maintaining impossible levels of growth. As we enter this green era, Washington will have to keep printing greenbacks to pay for these green jobs or a lot of people will find themselves out of work in a field that’s shrinking.
The area that should have sustainability is designing or retrofitting a building to use less energy to begin with. This requires a lot of planning to obtain LEED certification and then it requires a solid service provided to up-keep the equipment and be able to prove that the equipment is performing at peak efficiency. That’s the type of service we perform in the New York area.
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