Kenneth P. Green, of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), recently examined green energy in Europe in an essay titled, “The Myth of Green Energy Jobs: The European Experience.” Green thoroughly analyzes the green industry in Europe while seeking to discover the reasons behind its current downward spiral. As readers discover, this is largely due to the green industry being unsustainable while heavily relying on government intervention and subsidies.
Green uses the failing green industry in Europe to forewarn the United States that its policies, if continued, will bring the same unfruitful results. If the green industry is going to succeed it should not be a government supported industry, as Green states:
…governments do not “create” jobs; the willingness of entrepreneurs to invest their capital, paired with consumer demand for goods and services, does that.
All the government can do is subsidize some industries while jacking up costs for others. In the green case, it is destroying jobs in the conventional energy sector—and most likely other industrial sectors—through taxes and subsidies to new green companies that will use taxpayer dollars to undercut the competition. The subsidized jobs “created” are, by definition, less efficient uses of capital than market-created jobs. That means they are less economically productive than the jobs they displace and contribute less to economic growth. Finally, the good produced by government-favored jobs is inherently a non-economic good that has to be maintained indefinitely, often without an economic revenue model, as in the case of roads, rail systems, mass transit, and probably windmills, solar-power installations, and other green technologies.
Spain, according to Green, destroys an average of 2.2 jobs for every green job created, and since 2000, it has spent 571,138 Euros on each green job which includes subsidies of more than 1 million Euros per job in the wind industry. Italy also is experiencing problems. If Italy spent the same amount of capital in the general economy as it does in the green sector, then that same amount of capital that creates one job in the green industry would create 4.8 to 6.9 jobs for the general economy.
Green further explains a feed-in law instituted in Germany which requires utilities to purchase different kinds of renewable energy at different rates. The feed-in law requires utilities to buy solar power at a rate of 59 cents per kilowatt-hour when normal conventional electricity costs between 3 and 10 cents, and feed-in subsidies for wind power were 300 percent higher than conventional electricity costs. The implementation of wind and solar power did not even save German citizens money in energy rates because the household energy rates actually rose by 7.5 percent.
Denmark is also experiencing its fair share of problems. According the CEPOS, a Danish think tank that issued a report in 2009:
[the] CEPOS study found that rather than generating 20 percent of its energy from wind, “Denmark generates the equivalent of 19 percent of its electricity demand with wind turbines, but wind power contributes far less than 19 percent of the nation’s electricity demand. The claim that Denmark derives 20 percent of its electricity from wind overstates matters. Being highly intermittent, wind power has recently (2006) met as little as 5 percent of Denmark’s annual electricity consumption with an average over the last five years of 9.7 percent.”
Denmark currently has the highest electricity prices in the European Union, but while Danes are paying such high prices, one would imagine that there is a cost benefit factor occurring, such as great environmental benefits and a lower carbon footprint. However, Green explains that the greenhouse gas reduction benefits are actually slim to none: “The wind power consumed in Denmark does displace some fossil-fuel emissions, but at some cost: $124 per ton, nearly six times, the price on the European Trading System.”
With large inefficiencies and high costs in subsidies being paid in Europe, Green warns American policy makers not to follow in Europe’s footsteps. So the question is what should the U.S. Government do? The answer, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, is nothing.
In an editorial recently published the Las Vegas Review-Journal examines the costs of subsidies and support dollars per megawatt hour the U.S. spent in 2008. According to the Energy Information Administration, oil and natural gas received 25 cents per megawatt-hour, coal received 44 cents, Hydroelectric received 67 cents, nuclear power received $1.59, wind power received $23.37, solar power received $24.34 and refined coal received $29.81. The editorial also published comments from John Rowe, CEO of Chicago based Exelon which is the nation’s biggest nuclear power producer. In the editorial Rowe articulates a resonating message to President Obama and Congress concerning green energy policy:
…in trying to boost “clean” energy — wind, solar, nuclear and natural gas — Congress and the states have enacted or proposed bills that would burden consumers, cripple markets and increase federal debt but do little to clean up the air.
In a speech to the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute, Mr. Rowe said his message to lawmakers is simple: “I’m asking that Congress do nothing.”
Mr. Rowe said utilities across the country are turning to “cheap” natural gas to generate electricity and do not need a clean energy standard proposed by President Obama.
