Sunil Sharan, former director of the Smart Grid Initiative at GE, writes about the green job myth today in the Washington Post asking the question: “How valid is the assumption that a ‘clean-energy’ economy will generate enough jobs to mitigate today’s high level of unemployment – new jobless claims were up 22,000 this week – and to meet the needs of future generations?”
“The facts challenge the prevailing thinking among some policymakers and officials that green jobs are a principal reason for transforming the economy,” Sharan continues.
Sharan, who has worked in the clean-energy industry for a decade, uses the installation of “smart meters” as one example of green jobs that don’t amount to much.
“Although a surge of new digital meters will be produced, the manufacturing process is highly automated. And with much of it accomplished overseas, net creation in domestic manufacturing jobs is expected to be only in the hundreds,” Sharan says.
Finally, Sharan says something Conservatives have been saying for a few years now: “For the purpose of creating jobs … a ‘clean-energy economy’ will not offer a panacea.”
Read more here.
February 27th, 2010 at 12:00 am
What a crock! Green energy approaches 3% of America’s energy generation.. the socialist president wants to command economy up to 6% of America’s energy generation coupled with high paying local union jobs….code words for more little democrats and instant economic death of these enterprises without Soviet style subsidies…ala Government Motors and All In Government, AIG.
This will all pass. There is no capital in the United States to invest in gov. subsidized businesses…..we is broke…