Obama's 'stimuli' for solar, wind projects carry very heavy price tag

By Catholic Online (NEWS CONSORTIUM)
6/22/2012
Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)

Estimations run as high as $1.63 million to create EACH job

The Obama administration has in fact created jobs - however, each of these jobs carried a very heavy price tag. In the White House's distribution of $9 billion in economic "stimulus" funds to solar and wind projects in 2009-11, 910 "direct" jobs, such as operation and maintenance positions cost about $9.8 million to establish each of those long-term jobs. It gets better.

The rub about Obama's green spending program? Most of the jobs created were only temporary jobs; construction and installation work at the facilities, not long-term positions at the green energy sites.

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LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - These aforementioned green energy projects created about 4,600 "indirect" jobs, which are supported by operation and maintenance jobs, means they cost about $1.9 million each, $9 billion divided by 4,600.

With the 910 "direct" jobs and 4,600 indirect jobs, equaling at about 5,510 positions, the direct and indirect jobs cost, on average, about $1.63 million each to produce.

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory, part of the U.S. Department of Energy, reports that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 included Section 1603, a grant program run through the Treasury Department.

The 1603 program offered "renewable energy project developers a one-time cash payment" to reduce the need for green energy companies "to secure tax equity partners" and also help them to achieve "'the near term goal of creating and retaining jobs' in the renewable energy sector."

Tracking the grant program from its inception in 2009 through Nov. 10, 2011, the report from the laboratory is entitled, Preliminary Analysis of the Jobs and Economic Impacts of Renewable Energy Projects Supported by the 1603 Treasury Grant Program.

The report explains that the program provided "approximately $9.0 billion in funds to over 23,000 PV and large wind projects." PV stands for photovoltaic, which is the method by which solar power is turned into electricity with solar panels or solar cells. According to the report, there were specifically 197 large wind projects and 23,692 PV projects that received funds.

In summation, the report says that for the 2009-11 timeframe there were an average 52,000-75,000 "direct and indirect jobs per year" created for the construction, installation, and related work on the wind and solar projects.

The rub? These were only temporary jobs; construction and installation work at the facilities, not long-term positions at the green energy sites.

The number of these "indirect," temporary construction jobs averaged between 43,000 and 66,000, according to the EREL, and the "direct" jobs "supporting the design, development, and construction/installation of systems" averaged out to about 9,400 per year.

� 2012, Catholic Online. Distributed by NEWS CONSORTIUM.

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Keywords: Grenn jobs, solar energy, laboratory, Obama adminsitration

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1 - 1 of 1 Comments

Andrew Zimdahl
10 months ago
In addition to the jobs that were created, it also created 1000s of megawatts of clean power capacity in this country, which is a long term fixed asset that we are still benefiting from. Additionally, this led to efficiency developments in the sector, making alternative energy much cheaper than a few years ago, which has led to significant industry growth. This was the main point of the program; the direct and traceable indirect jobs were just bonus.

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