…not subsidized “green energy jobs.”
Colorado needs to take advantage of its 300 days of sunshine and its good locations for wind energy. But subsidizing these energies’ end markets – paying people to use them, or forcing electric companies to use them – is going to cost Colorado jobs in any number of ways.
Now, the model for President Obama’s Green Energy strategy, and for Governor Ritter’s “New Energy Economy” is admitting as much, privately (the original Spanish Government report is here).
In any industrialized economy, energy costs far outstrip labor costs, which makes employment much more vulnerable to increases in the price of electricity. And wind and solar are exceptionally expensive to produce. Which means that the jobs they create actually significantly reduce employment in those and other industries.
Colorado is lucky in its abundance of clean natural gas and clean coal. While continuing to help along the research end of solar and wind, we should make full use of our coal and natural gas resources, to get our economy back to full employment.
