WSJ/ The Non-Green Jobs Boom

[PeterMP]

I hope they do better than they did in Spain

http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy09osti/46261.pdf

"The recent report from King Juan Carlos University deviates from the traditional research methodologies used to estimate jobs impacts. In addition, it lacks transparency and supporting statistics, and fails to compare RE technologies with comparable energy industry metrics. It also fails to account for important issues such as the role of government in emerging markets, the success of RE exports in Spain, and the fact that induced economic impacts can be attributed to RE deployment. Finally, differences in policy are significant enough that the results of analysis conducted in the Spanish context are not likely to be indicative of workforce impacts in the United States or other countries."


There are a few other important points:
1. The prices have dropped from most of the Spain's experiment.
2. The technology is getting better.
3. Spain isn't paying the true costs of fossil fuel use in the way we do (i.e. they are essentially riding our coat tails in terms of foreign policy issues).

I won't even get into the costs that neither the origainal study in Spain or the DOE study (that I linked) are taking into account when it comes to fossil fules:

http://cleantechnica.com/2011/02/17/...d-study-finds/

"Full Cost of Coal $500 Billion/Year in U.S., Harvard Study Finds"