[F]or every job created in the United Kingdom in renewable energy, 3.7 jobs are lost. In Scotland, there is no net benefit from government support for the sector, and probably a small net loss of jobs.

By Kenneth P. Green at The American

EXCERPTS:

Does green energy lead to green jobs? This article is the second in a series that will look Europe’s experience. This time, we focus on the United Kingdom.

Alas, as a recent report by consultancy Verso Economics points out, the United Kingdom and Scotland have not fared well in their pursuit of the new green energy and green jobs economy. The Verso Economics study is particularly interesting because its methodology is touted as superior to the methodology used in similar studies. Rather than simply calculating how much it costs the government to create a green job and then using the average cost of a regular job to determine the ratio of jobs created to jobs destroyed, Verso uses what economists refer to as “input/output” tables to estimate the number of jobs that were foregone in the U.K. general economy in favor of the green jobs that were created through governmental subsidization.

Verso’s conclusion:

• The report’s key finding is that for every job created in the United Kingdom in renewable energy, 3.7 jobs are lost. In Scotland, there is no net benefit from government support for the sector, and probably a small net loss of jobs.

• The main policy tool used to promote renewable energy generation is the Renewables Obligation, which effectively raises the market price paid for electricity from renewable sources. This scheme cost electricity consumers £1.1billion in the United Kingdom and around £100 million in Scotland in 2009-2010.

• This report uses the Scottish government’s own macroeconomic model for Scotland to assess the impact of identified costs on jobs. A similar model was used by the Scottish government to measure the opportunity cost of the cut in a value-added tax implemented in 2008-2009. Based on this, policy to promote renewable energy in the United Kingdom has an opportunity cost of 10,000 direct jobs in 2009-2010 and 1,200 jobs in Scotland.

• In conclusion, policy to promote the renewable electricity sector in both Scotland and the United Kingdom is economically damaging. Government should not see this as an economic opportunity, therefore, but should focus debate instead on whether these costs, and the damage done to the environment, are worth the candle in terms of climate change mitigation.

While the United Kingdom and Scotland may have avoided the corruption problems that afflicted green energy in Spain and Italy (look for details in the Verso study and the rest of this article series), they learned something that the warmer countries did not: wind turbines, it seems, can freeze over in winter. Not only do they cease to put out power in very cold weather, they actually need to be heated. As reporter Richard Littlejohn points out in UK Daily Mail:

Over the past three weeks, with demand for power at record levels because of the freezing weather, there have been days when the contribution of our forests of wind turbines has been precisely nothing. It gets better. As the temperature has plummeted, the turbines have had to be heated to prevent them seizing up. Consequently, they have been consuming more electricity than they generate. Even on a good day they rarely work above a quarter of their theoretical capacity. And in high winds they have to be switched off altogether to prevent damage.

FULL ARTICLE

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