# "Green Jobs" Cost Taxpayers $1.63 Million Each-Good Deal Or Bad? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 21, 2012, 9:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/green-jobs-cost-taxpayers-1-63-million-each-good-deal-or-bad/625823 "2012-06-21T09:36:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2012, 9:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/green-jobs-cost-taxpayers-1-63-million-each-good-deal-or-bad/625823/1 "2012-06-21T09:36:51Z")
According to this article, the “stimulus program” for Solar Energy has yielded jobs:[http://cnsnews.com/news/article/9-billion-stimulus-solar-wind-projects-made-910-final-jobs-98-million-job....but](http://cnsnews.com/news/article/9-billion-stimulus-solar-wind-projects-made-910-final-jobs-98-million-job....but) at a rather high cost. Is this a good deal for taxpayers? I suspect that the high cost will mean that these projects will prove to be uneconomic, and most of the money spent (solar panels) went to Chinese suppliers. Can we conclude that such “stimulus” is not a good way to provide employment? Or, is it worth taking on such enormous debts, in the hope that such projects (eventually) might become worthwhile? The recent scandals (Solyndra, Evergreen) suggest otherwise. My opinion is that these expenditures were not worth the money spent-there wold have been better ways to spend the money (like repairing the crumbling interstate highway system). ---
**Author:** ![Foggy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foggy/32/1082_2.png) [@Foggy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Foggy)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2012, 10:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/green-jobs-cost-taxpayers-1-63-million-each-good-deal-or-bad/625823/2 "2012-06-21T10:06:22Z")
Working Link: [HERE](http://cnsnews.com/news/article/9-billion-stimulus-solar-wind-projects-made-910-final-jobs-98-million-job) ---
**Author:** ![Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/96bed5/32.png) [@Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Patty_O_Furniture)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2012, 11:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/green-jobs-cost-taxpayers-1-63-million-each-good-deal-or-bad/625823/3 "2012-06-21T11:21:48Z")
Might I suggest a rewording of the thread title to “Each Green Job” Costs Taxpayers $1.63 Million…" ---
**Author:** ![Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hentor_the_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2012, 11:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/green-jobs-cost-taxpayers-1-63-million-each-good-deal-or-bad/625823/4 "2012-06-21T11:29:18Z")
Is there any other source for this than CNS “news”? ---
**Author:** ![Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/96bed5/32.png) [@Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Patty_O_Furniture)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2012, 11:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/green-jobs-cost-taxpayers-1-63-million-each-good-deal-or-bad/625823/5 "2012-06-21T11:31:54Z")
And now that I’ve read the article… > [@](#): > > For calculating the number of green jobs created, the EREL did not actually count the people working at the facilities but instead relied upon Jobs and Economic Development Impact, or JEDI, computer models. You fool! They’re using an old JEDI computer model on you! Ahem… Shouldn’t this money be considered as a capital investment and its return measured in the (hopefully) many years of wind and solar farm operation rather than in the first year of its workers’ coffee breaks? ---
**Author:** ![jackdavinci](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackdavinci/32/3259_2.png) [@jackdavinci](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackdavinci)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2012, 11:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/green-jobs-cost-taxpayers-1-63-million-each-good-deal-or-bad/625823/6 "2012-06-21T11:54:05Z")
Is it just in manufacturing, or R&D? The latter is well spent while the former is debatable. ---
**Author:** ![Finagle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b19c9b/32.png) [@Finagle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Finagle)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2012, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/green-jobs-cost-taxpayers-1-63-million-each-good-deal-or-bad/625823/7 "2012-06-21T14:08:51Z")
Huh? I thought the issue was creating green power, not jobs. The projects they are looking at are photovoltaic and wind installations, not manufacturing. When you build a highway, no one considers it a good thing if it takes lots of jobs to maintain it. The article points out that there were lots of initial construction jobs (good for a stimulus program, I guess, and which the article ignored in their calculations) and then a vastly reduced number of direct and indirect jobs for maintaining the projects. Isn’t that what you want in an infrastructure project? ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2012, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/green-jobs-cost-taxpayers-1-63-million-each-good-deal-or-bad/625823/8 "2012-06-21T14:13:34Z")
Yeah, it’s kind of silly to say that the $9 billion resulted in 5,510, thus it cost $1.63 million/job. Bit (ok, more than a bit) disingenuous there. Not all of the money went strictly toward jobs, after all. Also: > [@](#): > > In its summary, the EREL report states 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. > > These were 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. > > For the operation and maintenance (O&M) of the photovoltaic and large wind systems, however, the report states there are “between 5,100 and 5,500 direct and indirect jobs per year on an ongoing basis over the 20- to 30-year estimated life of the systems.” So, you have a lot more temporary, construction type jobs than permanent jobs. None of these were factored in the ridiculous $9 billion divided by 5510 calculation. Personally, I think there is a lot you could criticize in stimulus stuff like this (it’s debatable), but this is a dishonest way to do it. -XT ---
**Author:** ![Jas09](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d07c76/32.png) [@Jas09](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jas09)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2012, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/green-jobs-cost-taxpayers-1-63-million-each-good-deal-or-bad/625823/9 "2012-06-21T15:06:40Z")
On top of the ridiculousness pointed out by **XT** , note that the permanent jobs are ongoing over the 20- to 30-year life of the systems. So at $1.63 million per job over 30 years that’s about $54k a year. I’d have to think that’s actually less than what these jobs pay, but even if not that’ means we pay these folks a salary for 30 years _and_ we get some nice renewable energy infrastructure for free. So for $9 billion we got something like 52 to 75 thousand temporary jobs (9,000 of which were directly on these projects), over 5,000 permanent jobs (which even if all $9 billion went to that is only $54k per year per job), and some capital investment in renewable energy. I was never the biggest fan of this part of the stimulus, but this thread is actually making it look pretty good. ---
**Author:** ![Jas09](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d07c76/32.png) [@Jas09](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jas09)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2012, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/green-jobs-cost-taxpayers-1-63-million-each-good-deal-or-bad/625823/10 "2012-06-21T15:12:33Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > My opinion is that these expenditures were not worth the money spent-there wold have been better ways to spend the money (like repairing the crumbling interstate highway system). I should perhaps add that Congress tried to pass a large federal transportation bill earlier this year but the GOP [couldn’t get something reasonable out of the House](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/25/us/politics/left-and-right-both-upset-by-transportation-bill.html?_r=1). So instead we just got a [stopgap bill](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/30/us/congress-extends-highway-funding-for-90-days.html). ---
**Author:** ![Kearsen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/82dd89/32.png) [@Kearsen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kearsen)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2012, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/green-jobs-cost-taxpayers-1-63-million-each-good-deal-or-bad/625823/11 "2012-06-21T18:26:33Z")
> [@Finagle](#): > > Huh? I thought the issue was creating green power, not jobs. The projects they are looking at are photovoltaic and wind installations, not manufacturing. When you build a highway, no one considers it a good thing if it takes lots of jobs to maintain it. The article points out that there were lots of initial construction jobs (good for a stimulus program, I guess, and which the article ignored in their calculations) and then a vastly reduced number of direct and indirect jobs for maintaining the projects. Isn’t that what you want in an infrastructure project? Ok, so how efficient are these jobs, long term? If say, 75% of the actual job costing is the initial cost (purchase, set up etc) And to comment on **jackdavinci’s** posting about R&D, are we now paying the Chinese to not only manufacture them but to research the technology as well? ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2012, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/green-jobs-cost-taxpayers-1-63-million-each-good-deal-or-bad/625823/12 "2012-06-21T19:07:30Z")
[QUOTE=Kearsen] And to comment on jackdavinci’s posting about R&D, are we now paying the Chinese to not only manufacture them but to research the technology as well? [/QUOTE] 😕 Where do you get from his post that ‘we’ (presumably the US government) is paying the Chinese to manufacture or develop this technology? I mean, sure, ‘we’ (private US energy companies and the like) buy solar and wind powered products FROM Chinese companies, but that’s not the same thing. -XT ---
**Author:** ![Finagle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b19c9b/32.png) [@Finagle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Finagle)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2012, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/green-jobs-cost-taxpayers-1-63-million-each-good-deal-or-bad/625823/13 "2012-06-22T00:33:26Z")
> [@Kearsen](#): > > Ok, so how efficient are these jobs, long term? If say, 75% of the actual job costing is the initial cost (purchase, set up etc) “How efficient are these jobs”? What does that even mean? ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2012, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/green-jobs-cost-taxpayers-1-63-million-each-good-deal-or-bad/625823/14 "2012-06-22T02:54:46Z")
An incredibly dishonest summary of the report by the media organization linked in the OP. Well, either dishonest or written by someone incredibly stupid. At least the CNS story does provide a link to the report itself, so that people who are interested in the facts can work out what the story is. The first thing to note is that, in estimating the total number of jobs produced by these projects, the report does not use the figure of $9.8 billion, because that was _only_ the money provided through the §1603 Treasury Grant Program. The Report notes that: > [@](#): > > Total investment in these projects, which includes capital investments from all private, regional, state, and federal sources (including §1603 funds), is estimated to exceed $30 billion. This $30 billion figure is the one they have used in the model. Of course, this makes the whole thing sound _even more expensive_ than the doom-and-gloom scenario described by CNS and the OP, but again, anyone who reads and understands the actual report will realize that CNS completely misrepresented its conclusions. The CNS article, as noted by **XT** , did include some of the other details from the report, but failed to appreciate their significance. Here’s some of the important stuff from the conclusion of the report: > [@](#): > > It is estimated that expenditures on these projects supported between 52,000 and 75,000 direct and indirect jobs annually (a total of 150,000–220,000 FTEs, or job-years, over the period) during the design, development, construction, and installation of the systems. The results equate to **5–7 job-years per million dollars of total investment** , or 11–16 jobs-years per megawatt of installed capacity. In addition, it is estimated that these projects supported $3.1 billion–$4.9 billion per year in earnings and $9.1 billion–$15.4 billion per year in economic output. My emphasis. So, if we take the $30 billion invested so far, that money has _already_ created 150,000 to 220,000 gross job-years, meaning that each job-year created has cost $140,000-$200,000 (the 5-7 job-years per million dollars, described in the quote above). Now, some might argue that spending a whole bunch of money on jobs that pay $140,000-200,000 a year might not be the best use of funds, but remember that the program created all those jobs for three years before we even consider the jobs that CNS used as the basis for its calculations. CNS also conveniently neglected to mention the economic output discussed in the report. Next, we can consider the long-term jobs. From the report: > [@](#): > > During the operational phase, these projects are estimated to continue to support 5,100–5,500 direct and indirect jobs, approximately $0.3 billion in earnings, and $1.7 billion–$1.8 billion in economic output annually for the lifetime of the projects (generally 20–30 years). These operational period jobs represent approximately 0.4 jobs per megawatt of installed capacity. The estimates vary with the assumed domestic content of a system, which were bounded between 30% and 70%. All this is, as others have noted, and as the report makes clear, _in addition to_ the three years of jobs created during the planning and construction phase of the project. And none of this job-creation discussion even takes into account all the actual stuff (i.e., power generation) that was created by the project. It was never designed merely as a job creation project, as CNS’s asinine analysis seems to imply. Funny how, in an article about a project designed to fund new sources of energy, they manage to focus only on a specific subset of jobs created by the project, and completely ignore the actual product of all that labor. To be fair, the report does note that its conclusions relate to _gross jobs created_. It makes clear that it is not calculating the number of _net jobs created_, because it makes no effort to calculate how many jobs might have been lost, or not created, in other sectors or on other projects as a result of this project. The authors also note that they have not attempted to quantify how many of these alternative energy projects might have gone ahead anyway, even in the absence of the §1603 Treasury Grant Program. Apart from his willingness to simply swallow the CNS story whole, the OP also, unsurprisingly, manages to get things wrong as well. He describes the project as a “‘stimulus program’ for Solar Energy,” yet the report notes that the majority of §1603 funds, and the majority of total investment, actually went into large wind energy projects. Of the $9.8 billion in §1603 funds, $7.7 billion went to large wind. The OP also makes the same mistake as CNS when he argues that projects like this are “not a good way to provide employment.” As noted above, and by others in this thread, this project was not funded merely as a job-creation exercise. We didn’t spend $9.8 billion to pay people for doing nothing. We actually get something out of all these projects; not just tangible facilities for creating power, but a shift in the direction of more responsible, environmentally friendly power generation. The fact that the OP completely misses this issue tells us quite a lot about his perspicacity and analytical abilities. The nation’s crumbling infrastructure is indeed an important issue, and as **XT** notes, there are some reasonable arguments to be made against projects like the §1603 Treasury Grant Program, but i fear that the OP hasn’t shown himself capable of understanding these issues, let alone entering into an in-depth debate on the matter. ---
**Author:** ![Whambulance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9a140/32.png) [@Whambulance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whambulance)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2012, 7:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/green-jobs-cost-taxpayers-1-63-million-each-good-deal-or-bad/625823/15 "2012-06-22T07:21:47Z")
> [@Jas09](#): > > On top of the ridiculousness pointed out by **XT** , note that the permanent jobs are ongoing over the 20- to 30-year life of the systems. So at $1.63 million per job over 30 years that’s about $54k a year. I’d have to think that’s actually less than what these jobs pay, but even if not that’ means we pay these folks a salary for 30 years _and_ we get some nice renewable energy infrastructure for free. > > So for $9 billion we got something like 52 to 75 thousand temporary jobs (9,000 of which were directly on these projects), over 5,000 permanent jobs (which even if all $9 billion went to that is only $54k per year per job), and some capital investment in renewable energy. I was never the biggest fan of this part of the stimulus, but this thread is actually making it look pretty good. In defense of the skeptics, you are not accounting for any of the other long term costs like: regular maintenance of the systems by very skilled and expensively trained personnel, insurance of the structures, or loss of the land to other enterprises like farming (to name a few). You could argue that you’ve created other jobs by virtue of the other necessary services but you also create the need for additional funding that has to come from somewhere. ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2012, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/green-jobs-cost-taxpayers-1-63-million-each-good-deal-or-bad/625823/16 "2012-06-22T16:54:32Z")
> [@Whambulance](#): > > In defense of the skeptics, you are not accounting for any of the other long term costs like: regular maintenance of the systems by very skilled and expensively trained personnel, insurance of the structures, or loss of the land to other enterprises like farming (to name a few). But again, the things you’ve created aren’t just large useless statues. They’re things like wind turbines, which produce electricity, which gets sold to customers. It’s not like the ongoing costs of these enterprises are simply funded out of nowhere; the very enterprises themselves can, once they are up and running, create energy that can be sold, and the money that comes in can then be used to support things like maintenance and insurance. ---
**Author:** ![Bridget\_Burke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7cd45c/32.png) [@Bridget\_Burke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bridget_Burke)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2012, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/green-jobs-cost-taxpayers-1-63-million-each-good-deal-or-bad/625823/17 "2012-06-22T17:05:42Z")
> [@mhendo](#): > > An incredibly dishonest summary of the report by the media organization linked in the OP. Well, either dishonest or written by someone incredibly stupid. > > At least the CNS story does provide a link to the report itself, so that people who are interested in the facts can work out what the story is… Thanks for the useful information–that I deleted! Sourcewatch has [this information](http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Cybercast_News_Service) on CNS: > [@](#): > > Cybercast News Service (CNS) is a subsidiary of the conservative news monitoring group, the Media Research Center (MRC). Originally calling itself the “Conservative News Service,” CNS changed its name to Cybercast in 2000. Of course, the attached comments make CNS’s audience quite clear… ---
**Author:** ![snowthx](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowthx/32/10660_2.png) [@snowthx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snowthx)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2012, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/green-jobs-cost-taxpayers-1-63-million-each-good-deal-or-bad/625823/18 "2012-06-22T22:44:51Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > My opinion is that these expenditures were not worth the money spent-there wold have been better ways to spend the money (like repairing the crumbling interstate highway system). One could make the same argument over red-meat favorites like defense projects, NASA, Homeland Security, farm subsidies, etc. ---
**Author:** ![Fubaya](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c2a13f/32.png) [@Fubaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fubaya)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2012, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/green-jobs-cost-taxpayers-1-63-million-each-good-deal-or-bad/625823/19 "2012-06-27T15:40:37Z")
The building I work in cost $6 million and employs 30 people, so it “costs” $200,000 per job. Oddly, if we double the number of employees, the cost would be cut in half. Heck, if we hired 6 million people, each job would only cost $1. I gotta go make a proposal to the boss. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2012, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/green-jobs-cost-taxpayers-1-63-million-each-good-deal-or-bad/625823/20 "2012-06-28T20:27:30Z")
> [@mhendo](#): > > An incredibly dishonest summary of the report by the media organization linked in the OP. Well, either dishonest or written by someone incredibly stupid. It sounds like that article was written by an idiot. The author is performing a back of the napkin cost/benefit analysis where the “benefit” is actually another project cost (eg labor costs). The benefit is actually the total MWattage of clean energy produced over the lifetime of the projects. The costs are all the labor, multi million dollar wind turbines and other expenses incurred in setting them up. The actual question to be asked is if the costs of these green energy projects is more or less than the costs of creating an equivalent amount of MWts using fossil fuels (factoring pollution and other externalities). But that’s a lot of thinkin’ math for what I assume is a right-wing blog. If we just measured projects by the number of jobs they created, we’d just pay people to dig holes and fill them up again. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/green-jobs-cost-taxpayers-1-63-million-each-good-deal-or-bad/625823.md?page=2)