"Sustainability" has been the magic word that extracted large sums of public subsidy that couldn't otherwise have been rationally justified using traditional cost/benefit measures. Spain paid 11 times more for "green" energy than it did for fossil fuels. The public makes up the difference.But what, I hear you ask, about all those new "Green" jobs?
This is from a new analysis of the disaster that is the Spanish power program (PDF here). Remember, this is the program that was the model for Obama's renewable energy plan.For sure, you can create a temporary jobs boom, but these are artificial, and the exercise is as useful as paying people to dig a hole in the ground, then fill it in. Spanish economist Professor Gabriel Calzada, at the University of Madrid estimated that each green job had cost the country $774,000.
Worse, a "green" job costs 2.2 jobs that might otherwise have been created - a figure Calzada derived by dividing the average subsidy per worker by the average productivity per worker. Industry, which can't afford to pay the higher fuel bills, simply moves elsewhere.
So what's the difference between the Spanish plan and Obama's? The Spain.Gov is ditching their's because it's bankrupting them. Obama's looks like it's coming at us. Good and hard.
Its just the opposite of the victory of Internal Combustion automobiles over Steam and Electric in the early 1900's that I posted about a while back.
ReplyDeleteArtificially forcing an inferior, unwanted product is about the least "sustainable" thing you can do. Its doomed to failure, if for no other reason than you and I will eventually run out of money to fund their pet projects. The pity is that they will deny the facts right up until the end - making it even more painful for all of us.
Look at Greece.... even as the boat sinks, they are rioting to try to keep the little umbrellas in their mai tais.
It's like Communism - I'm sure they just didn't do it right! When WE do it, it'll work! Swearsies!
ReplyDeleteIsn't this where the solar power companies were using searchlights at night to produce solar power in the dark just so they got the additionally subsidized money?
ReplyDeleteMr B: Not quite. They were using generators at night.
ReplyDeleteSolar Fraud
"Preliminary evidence shows some solar stations may have run diesel-burning generators and sold the output as solar power, ..."
One of the final reports said that it wasn't really all that much, anyway.
Mr. B - yes indeed it was.
ReplyDelete