That Spanish Report
This has not been corroborated yet but from Christopher Horner at
Pajamas Media:
BREAKING: �Green� Energy Company Threatens Economics Professor � with Package of Dismantled Bomb Parts
Spain�s Dr. Gabriel Calzada � the author of a damning study concluding that Spain�s �green jobs� energy program has been a catastrophic economic failure � was mailed a dismantled bomb on Tuesday by solar energy company Thermotechnic.
Says Calzada:
Before opening it, I called [Thermotechnic] to know what was inside � they answered, it was their answer to my energy pieces.
Dr. Calzada contacted a terrorism expert to handle the package. The expert first performed a scan of the package, then opened it in front of a journalist, Dr. Calzada, and a private security expert.
The terrorism consultant said he had seen this before:
This time you receive unconnected pieces. Next time it can explode in your hands.
Dr. Calzada added:
[The terrorism expert] told me that this was a warning.
Of course, Thermotechnic is denying the whole thing. What makes alt-energy so attractive for so many companies is that it is not commercially viable so the government has to step in with huge subsidies.
The report that Dr. Calzada wrote can be found
here (53 page PDF) and it starts off listing twenty four bullet-points. Here are the first
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: LESSONS FROM THE SPANISH RENEWABLES BUBBLE
Europe's current policy and strategy for supporting the so-called "green jobs" or renewable energy dates back to 1997, and has become one of the principal justifications for U.S. "green jobs" proposals. Yet an examination of Europe's experience reveals these policies to be terribly economically counterproductive.
This study is important for several reasons. First is that the Spanish experience is considered a leading example to be followed by many policy advocates and politicians. This study marks the very first time a critical analysis of the actual performance and impact has been made. Most important, it demonstrates that the Spanish/EU-style "green jobs" agenda now being promoted in the U.S. in fact destroys jobs, detailing this in terms of jobs destroyed per job created and the net destruction per installed MW.
The study's results demonstrate how such "green jobs" policy clearly hinders Spain's way out of the current economic crisis, even while U.S. politicians insist that rushing into such a scheme will ease their own emergence from the turmoil.
The following are key points from the study:
1. As President Obama correctly remarked, Spain provides a reference for the establishment of government aid to renewable energy. No other country has given such broad support to the construction and production of electricity through renewable sources. The arguments for Spain's and Europe's "green jobs" schemes are the same arguments now made in the U.S., principally that massive public support would produce large numbers of green jobs. The question that this paper answers is "at what price?"
2. Optimistically treating European Commission partially funded data we find that for every renewable energy job that the State manages to finance, Spain's experience cited by President Obama as a model reveals with high confidence, by two different methods, that the U.S. should expect a loss of at least 2.2 jobs on average, or about 9 jobs lost for every 4 created, to which we have to add those jobs that non-subsidized investments with the same resources would have created.
3. Therefore, while it is not possible to directly translate Spain's experience with exactitude to claim that the U.S. would lose at least 6.6 million to 11 million jobs, as a direct consequence were it to actually create 3 to 5 million "green jobs" as promised (in addition to the jobs lost due to the opportunity cost of private capital employed in renewable energy), the study clearly reveals the tendency that the U.S. should expect such an outcome.
4. At minimum, therefore, the study's evaluation of the Spanish model cited as one for the U.S. to replicate in quick pursuit of "green jobs" serves a note of caution, that the reality is far from what has typically been presented, and that such schemes also offer considerable employment consequences and implications for emerging from the economic crisis.
5. Despite its hyper-aggressive (expensive and extensive) "green jobs" policies it appears that Spain likely has created a surprisingly low number of jobs, two- thirds of which came in construction, fabrication and installation, one quarter in administrative positions, marketing and projects engineering, and just one out of ten jobs has been created at the more permanent level of actual operation and maintenance of the renewable sources of electricity.
6. This came at great financial cost as well as cost in terms of jobs destroyed elsewhere in the economy.
7. The study calculates that since 2000 Spain spent �571,138 to create each "green job", including subsidies of more than �1 million per wind industry job.
8. The study calculates that the programs creating those jobs also resulted in the destruction of nearly 110,500 jobs elsewhere in the economy, or 2.2 jobs destroyed for every "green job" created.
9. Principally, the high cost of electricity affects costs of production and employment levels in metallurgy, non-metallic mining and food processing, beverage and tobacco industries.
10. Each "green" megawatt installed destroys 5.28 jobs on average elsewhere in the economy: 8.99 by photovoltaics, 4.27 by wind energy, 5.05 by mini-hydro.
These are just the first ten items -- thirteen more in the report and then all of the data to back it up as well as the history of Spain's involvement with finding alternative energy sources. Despite this being Spain from 1991 to 2009, the data is still very relevant, there have been no new technologies and there will not be any new technologies.
In 2004, at the height of this craziness, Spain was
generating 49% of its electricity from Oil, 18% from Gas, 15% from Solid Fuels (Coal), 12% Nuke,
and 6% from renewables. And this is at the peak of the campaign to adopt alternative energy sources.
We need to take our eyes off that shiny bauble fluttering just above our reach and start building nukes and drill more oil.
Posted by DaveH at June 24, 2010 8:05 PM