“How Obama’s Green Energy Agenda Is Killing Jobs”

September 24th, 2011 by Susan Kraemer

On September 22, The House Oversight & Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa chaired yet another Republican hearing against the president’s climate change policy in the new GOP-held House. In the hearing, titled “How Obama’s Green Energy Agenda Is Killing Jobs” Issa claimed that President Obama is destroying jobs by conducting a “systematic war” against fossil energy by aggressively pushing clean energy.

To stop climate change, obviously it is necessary to switch to a clean energy economy, and so government policy that aggressively pushes a clean energy economy is the appropriate response. The only way to avoid the conclusion that we must aggressively push clean energy would be to pretend that climate scientists do not know what they say they know about climate change, which is what Issa’s party is pretending to believe, because they are paid to pretend that climate scientists do not know these things.

According to Clean Energy Report, Issa ridiculed administration estimates that energy innovation will create five million green jobs within 10 years. That does seem like a tall order, with tail winds like a $50 billion Koch-brother-funded GOP holding back policy. But according to Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, tasked with the clean economy job of defending the administration’s clean economy policy against its enemies, we are already more than half way there.

Solis cited the June Brookings Institution report that estimated clean economy jobs at 2.7 million. The way labor is classified, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and used by Solis and in the Brookings study, the definition is that “green jobs help to preserve or restore the environment or conserve natural resources.” They are not simply the jobs directly producing clean energy.

Solis argued that the clean energy sector is a broad one that encompasses energy efficient mass transit and other sectors that are part of a “whole new industry” emerging as a result of private investment decisions that the federal government is supporting in various ways. This definition is long overdue. The oft-touted solar panel manufacturers and turbine installers are really just the tip of the iceberg of the new clean energy economy that is growing around us.

Here is a personal example. Last spring, I took advantage of the new low prices for solar, cutting my energy bill to $4 from $100. But it took my small town’s building department an astounding four months to approve the solar permit for our roof, because our old-school building inspector lacked the expertise to handle solar permitting, and couldn’t bring himself to decide one way or another about our application.

Our city council finally added an additional building inspector in the building department who did have solar expertise, and our application was approved. That is one indirect clean economy job, (and so is that of the solar electrical instructor who taught him). Yet many people would think to count only the jobs of the four men who spent a couple of hours installing on our roof.

By the Labor Department definition, a bus driver who drives a emissions-free bus, for example, has a new clean economy job, even though it is not directly producing clean energy. But Florida Republican Connie Mack challenged the classification of a bus driving job as green just because the bus was a clean vehicle.

Citing the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ definition of green jobs, Solis responded that the fuel efficient, clean bus is part of the emerging clean energy economy and that the Labor Department was “not misleading the public” in classifying it as “green jobs help to preserve or restore the environment or conserve natural resources.”

Mack said the job was not “green” but was simply a job. He later suggested that the Labor Department should not “pad statistics” to make it look like green jobs programs are working.

To most Americans, “simply a job” looks pretty good these days. Clean economy jobs enable us to work and live in a clean energy economy that leaves a future economy for future people to have a job in.

Whether it is a building inspector who permits a new kind of self-sufficient climate-friendly home, a bus driver who drives a new kind of climate-friendly bus, or an official who defends a new kind of climate-friendly policy against its sworn enemies, these are all good new jobs in cities and towns around the country, created by Obama’s “systematic war on fossil fuels.”

But, as Kate Gordon notes at ThinkProgress, the hard core clean energy sector – wind, solar, fuel cell, smart grid, biofuel, and battery companies – grew far more quickly, at nearly twice the growth rate of the economy as a whole, at an average rate of 8.3%.

That’s some “job killing” green energy agenda!

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Tags: Brookings, Issa, job-killing, Obama, Solis

About the Author

Susan Kraemer writes at CleanTechnica, CSP-Today, PV-Insider , SmartGridUpdate, and GreenProphet. She has also been published at Ecoseed, NRDC OnEarth, MatterNetwork, Celsius, EnergyNow, and Scientific American. As a former serial entrepreneur in product design, Susan brings an innovator's perspective on inventing a carbon-constrained civilization: If necessity is the mother of invention, solving climate change is the mother of all necessities! As a lover of history and sci-fi, she enjoys chronicling the strange future we are creating in these interesting times. Follow Susan on Twitter @dotcommodity.

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Anonymous

Yeah, have covered it a bit here & on Planetsave:
http://planetsave.com/2011/09/25/darrell-issa-get-from-ev-company-ask-for-loan-then-criticize-loan-program/
Anonymous

It’s the carbon industry staging a scene out of “The Empire Strikes Back.” Time for the Jedi to get out their lightsabers!!
- Anonymous
  
  Screw the lightsabers.
  
  Let’s drop a ‘clean bomb’ on their butts.
  - Anonymous
    
    meaning sunshine?
    - Anonymous
      
      I’m thinking renewable energy so cheap that no one will be willing to pay for oil or coal.
      
      If we could get people to wise up as to how much coal really costs to burn we’d be running away from it right now.
      - Anonymous
        
        I know, it’s too bad people can’t easily equate pollution with trips to the hospital.
      - Anonymous
        
        I think we all, all of us, need to keep putting the hidden cost of coal up where people will see it.
        
        The message will only get out if it’s repeated often and in a variety of places.
      - Anonymous
        
        Yep
        
        I mention it every time i mention the cost of coal, and often when i mention the cost of solar or wind.
Asd

Alternative energy is akin to alternative medicine. If it ever actually worked it would not be alternative, it would be mainstream. Wind and solar are not new technologies. Electric cars were around over 100 years ago before the combustion engine made them redundant, after decades of massive subsidies, the most practical use for solar is dimly lighting the edges of my driveway for a couple of hours after sunset. Every time there is a price spike in real energy, there are those trying to get their grubby hands on a fast subsidized buck selling snake oil ‘alternatives’. don’t fall for it.
- Anonymous
  
  Alternative energy is becoming mainstream energy. While wind, solar and electric cars have been around for a long time the technology on which they were built was not able to compete against cheap fossil fuels.
  
  Now fossil fuels are becoming expensive and we are starting to understand that we cannot continue to burn fossil fuels without destroying our habitat.
  
  Wind is now the cheapest new way to create electricity if we include all subsidies and hidden costs. Geothermal is cheaper than new nuclear or new coal. Solar is cheaper than new coal and falling below the price of new nuclear.
  
  Wind has now become 3% of our US electricity supply. Solar is growing like gangbusters. Almost all car manufacturers are bringing EVs to market. Our largest corporation such as GE are becoming part of the the renewable energy industry.
  
  The one portion of our economy which is growing during this prolonged economic period is renewable energy. We’re in the early years of renewables becoming mainstream and fossil fuel use falling away.
  - Anonymous
    
    But, Asd, if you want to stay locked into the past, everone’s got a right to their own denial and nostalgia. I just don’t recommend trying to spread it if you want people to take you seriously.
    - Dewaynecurry
      
      You really ought to not respond with Ad hominem attacks. Maybe you should take a class on logical discourse. If you do not agree with his points then explain why if you want to be taken seriously. You are turning this site into a fanatical “Left-wing” haven that no longer discusses the honest virtues of alternative technologies.
      - Anonymous
        
        Dewaynecurry: the detailed response above by Bob suffices, no?
        
        He is clearly not here to discuss. There is a technical term now for these people who go to sites they obviously oppose and try to spread propaganda — “trolls.” The mission is not to discuss, but to waste people’s time and confuse the public.
        
        I’m sorry, but I’ve logically discussed with such people for years. It goes nowhere.
        
        Why would someone who is totally against clean energy come to a clean energy site and call it ridiculous? And do you really think such people who do so are open to factual persuasion?
- Anonymous
  
  by the way, i hardly ever hear the term “alternative energy” any more. MUCH more common is “clean energy” or “renewable energy.” maybe for exactly the reason you accidentally imply.. it’s not “alternative” any more in many places
wayne

Let’s just tell it like it is. The real reason alternative fuels are having a difficult time is that there are over 7000 lobbyists in the oil and gas industry.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Charles-Daniels/779433687 Charles Daniels

I am all for creating more green energy jobs, but I must disagree with your opinion that “a bus driver who drives a new kind of climate-friendly bus” is a good new job “created by Obama’s ‘systematic war on fossil fuels.'”

Just because a bus driver who is already driving a bus on an existing bus route is given a new “green” bus to drive doesn’t mean the driver’s job can be counted as a green energy job. Even if the driver were newly hired to drive a newly added route, I feel that the new driver’s job cannot rightly be counted as a green energy job. (Although, in either case, I would be very happy about the “green” bus.)

There are at least 2 reasons that I don’t feel it’s fair to count such a job as a green energy job:

1. The bus driver likely has no choice in the matter. The driver probably neither has a choice in the type of bus to drive, nor was the driver’s choice to drive a bus based on a desire to “help to preserve or restore the environment or conserve natural resources.”

2. If you don’t agree with the reason above, then you should at least agree with the following: if you count the job of a driver who drives a “green” bus as a green energy job, then you must count the job of a driver who does not drive a “green” bus as a fossil energy job. It’s only fair.

Given this, I would suggest that the Bureau of Labor and Statistics slightly modify their definition from “green jobs help to preserve or restore the environment or conserve natural resources.” to something similar to the this: “green jobs are for the express purpose of helping to preserve or restore the environment or conserving natural resources.”

It’s not much of a change, but the difference is the expression of intent or purpose. The bus driver does not drive a bus with the express intent to help the environment, even if the driver is an advocate for the environment. Conversely, a driver who does not drive a “green” bus does not likely drive such a bus because they want to destroy the environment nor want to be counted as a fossil energy worker.

Finally, if for no other reason, we should not count such jobs as green energy jobs so that we don’t give our opponents another reason to complain about our statistics.
- Susan Kraemer
  
  Good points, all. I am all for precise and accurate statistics.
  
  But if we did limit green jobs to just the solar installer, etc, (which with an 8.3% growth rate is great) it is also true that we would undercount the new jobs held in the new clean energy economy.
  
  Think about the new economy created around computing and the internet. Not every job created was writing code. In Kate’s piece she gives examples of the construction workers who build the server farms.
  
  But I thought of the people who pile up eBay junk for people for resale on eBay. Is that person a junk shop owner, or was that an internet job created by the new computer economy? Likely there were not enough local customers to support the junk shop without the internet.