I’ve never believed perky predictions that wind and solar farms in deserts would provide enough jobs to move states out of recession. This has become clear in Nevada, even with Sen. Harry Reid pushing hard for renewables.
“This claim was false from the beginning. The claim that you were going to get lots of cost-effective, viable jobs with the green energy revolution was always highly suspicious,” said David Victor, an expert on energy policy and co-director of the Laboratory on International Law and Regulation at the University of California, San Diego. “For now, the industry’s dependent on subsidies, and if the subsidies go, the jobs go.”
Plus, to perhaps state the obvious, most construction jobs are in isolated areas in blistering hot deserts. Getting people to work in such areas is a challenge. Plus, there just aren’t that many such jobs as compared to the unemployment rates.
The Solyndra bankruptcy after they got over $500 million in guaranteed loans from the federal government simply makes the situation much worse. It’s a given that Republicans will work to eliminate such loan guarantees in the future. This will have a devastating effect on the industry. Â And really, we need to know how they blew through so much money and have nothing to show for it.
This is not unlike the other big infrastructure projects the lefties proclaim will save the economy. Historically big projects (think Hoover Dam, the Interstates) required thousands if not tens of thousands of workers to do what today, due to technological advances, can be done with mere hundreds. Or less.
Biden and Sec. Cho just touted a grid-scale project that would employ 250 during construction. That’s a piddly amount of workers compared to those who need jobs. Even if there’s 100 such projects happening, that’s just 25,000. Across several states, too.