Green Energy Jobs

Quick Summary

• Joe Biden says that his policies to eliminate US CO2 emissions through a largely solar- and wind-based energy system will create millions of well-paying "green jobs"--far more than will be destroyed in the fossil fuel industry.

  This is impossible.¹

• A largely solar-and wind-based energy system will necessarily destroy far more well-paying US jobs than it creates because the "green jobs" will be 1) far less productive, 2) largely in China, and 3) cause job losses in other industries via skyrocketing energy prices.²
• Reason #1 why Biden's energy policies will destroy productive US jobs: "green jobs" are far less productive than the fossil fuel jobs that Biden is destroying--so they cannot possibly pay as well.
• The only way well-paying jobs are sustainable in the long-term is if they are highly productive. For example, the reason US oil-and-gas extractions jobs pay very well is that they produce an average of $2 million per worker annually. Nothing in wind or solar can compare.³
• Workers involved in generating electricity from natural gas and coal produce *9 times more electricity per person* than workers generating electricity from wind and solar. And the fossil fuel electricity, unlike solar and wind, is highly reliable.⁴
• Reason #2 why Biden's energy policies will destroy productive US jobs: "green jobs" mostly exist in China, which has a huge competitive advantage in mining, processing, and manufacturing.
• The main jobs involved in solar and wind energy are mining jobs (to get the raw materials), processing jobs (to transform the raw materials into valuable form) and manufacturing jobs (to make solar panels and wind turbine components). Those jobs exist largely in China.⁵
• China's dominance of "green energy" is due to a combination of vices (low environmental standards, human rights abuses) and virtues (lower energy costs, valuing mining and manufacturing). The anti-mining, anti-fossil fuel Biden administration will make us even less competitive.
• Consider Tesla's "green jobs" debacle in Buffalo. Tesla got almost $1 billion plus artificially low electricity rates (at other customers' expense) in exchange for a promise of 1460 jobs--that's over $650,000 a job! This kind of welfare work is totally unsustainable.⁶
• Reason #3 why Biden's energy policies will destroy productive US jobs: by making American energy unaffordable and unreliable, it will destroy American industry and with it, American jobs.
• The biggest cost of "green jobs" is unaffordable and unreliable energy. Because unreliable solar and wind can't replace our reliable power plants, they always add costs to the grid. And if we try, like CA and TX, to cut costs by closing reliable power plants, we get blackouts.⁷
• Germany, which gets 1/3 of its electricity from solar and wind, provides a mild preview of the Biden Plan. Germans have seen their electricity prices double in 20 years thanks to wasteful, unreliable solar and wind. Their electricity prices are 3X our already-too-high prices.⁸
• By driving up industrial energy costs, Biden's "green energy jobs" will make every American-made product more expensive and every American company less competitive. That means more productive jobs lost to other countries where energy costs less and is more reliable.
• For a preview of what Biden's "green energy jobs" will do to American industry, consider rising "green joblessness" in Europe and Australia. Like the workers at the Australian recycling company that, after 37 profitable years, went under when "green" policies doubled power costs.⁹
• Biden's policies, by shifting us from productive, America-centered energy production to unproductive, China-centered energy production, would be the largest destroyer of productive jobs in American history. It's not a "green jobs" policy, it's a "green joblessness" policy.

Q: Won’t Joe Biden’s energy plan create enough “green energy jobs” to offset millions of lost jobs in the fossil fuel industry?

A: No. By making energy unreliable and unaffordable for every American industry, the Biden Plan would create mass "green joblessness."

• "Creating jobs" is only a good thing if those jobs are productive jobs. If the government pays people to produce inferior products and services or pays people to produce inefficiently, that is "welfare work" that hurts American consumers and American competitiveness.
• Many of the jobs created by the Biden Plan would involve building new, unreliable solar and wind infrastructure.¹⁰ This infrastructure can't replace our reliable power plants--it will just add a lot of new costs that consumers and industry have to pay. Classic welfare work.¹¹
• By driving up consumer energy costs, Biden's "green energy jobs" will make every American's real income go down because they will have to spend far more to heat and power their homes and to drive their cars.
• Solar and wind have already increased US "energy poverty"--when people experience hardship paying for their basic energy needs. 25 million US households say they've gone without food or medicine to pay for energy. 12 million say they’ve kept their home at an unsafe temperature.¹²
• Germany, which gets 1/3 of its electricity from solar and wind¹³, provides a mild preview of the Biden Plan. Germans have seen their electricity prices double in 20 years thanks to wasteful, unreliable solar and wind. Their electricity prices are 3X our already-too-high prices.¹⁴
• By driving up industrial energy costs, Biden's "green energy jobs" will make every American-made product more expensive and every American company less competitive. That means more productive jobs lost to other countries where energy is more reliable and costs less.
• For a preview of what Biden's "green energy jobs" will do to American industry, consider rising "green joblessness" in Europe and Australia. Like the workers at the Australian recycling company that, after 37 profitable years, went under when "green" policies doubled power costs.¹⁵
• Biden's "green energy jobs" will cause "green joblessness" throughout the economy, with those connected to the fossil fuel industry being hardest hit. The Global Energy Institute estimates that a fracking ban alone "would eliminate 19 million jobs."¹⁶
• While Biden now says he doesn't support a fracking ban, he supports a "transition" away from all fossil fuels that would be far wider than a fracking ban.¹⁷ That means far more productive jobs lost than the Global Energy Institute's 19 million estimate for a fracking ban.
• Summary: Biden's energy plan will create a handful of unproductive "green energy jobs" that, by making American energy unreliable and unaffordable, will cause mass "green joblessness" in not just the fossil fuel industry but in every energy-intensive industry.

References