Renewable Energy Job Creation
Over the next few months, I have committed myself to performing comprehensive research into the pragmatic issues that prevent a rapid migration to renewables. I’m not 100% sure how to organize this research, and even less sure how to present the findings, but for now, I’m just trying to make a list of the big, obvious issues, and then do enough reading and interviewing that I feel I’ve reached a reasonable conclusion.
Of course, each major country on Earth is going to have its own story to tell. To whatever degree I’m able, I’d like to explore the workings of places like China and Brazil, where, I’m told, they get things done by government mandate. I’m more familiar — though not completely so — with the US, in which we have a weird balance between the public and private sectors — part of the ongoing debate on limits of governmental power to regulate, etc.
I’ve decided to start looking at the issue of job creation in the US. Part of the accepted reality that has existed since the 1930s’ response to the Great Depression is the idea of governmental regulation into most if not all of the macro-economic factors that form the framework in which we make our basic business decisions: borrow money to start or expand businesses, hire people, purchase capital equipment, sell our products to customers outside the US, etc.
Government always wants high employment (especially now with the crisis) knowing that unemployed people are angry people who vote to remove incumbents. But there are obvious limits to the government’s ability to fork over money that it doesn’t have to stimulate job growth in renewable energy or any other area.
Here are a few questions:
How true is it that a concerted effort to move away from fossil fuel consumption will add net new jobs in significant number?
How does this work, exactly? Suppose the Congress passes a certain “clean energy jobs” bill. How — and how quickly — does that translate in public or private organizations actually hiring people?
What will most of these jobs probably be like? I would think that society would consider it a net “win” to have jobs mining coal replaced with building PV or CSP plants. But is that true? I’d be surprised if the coal industry saw it that way.
Doesn’t almost all of this surround subsidies? The price of oil determines essentially all of this, doesn’t it? Everything from unconventional oil extraction techniques like tar sands and shale oil to the dozens of different forms of clean energy are contemplated vis-a-vis the competition that oil provides at a certain price. So let’s look at the oil and gas industries and try to understand what actually determines those prices.
For this we will turn to dozens of researchers and analysts.
We will also explore the conditions by which capital formation occurs, noting that this is the worst environment for capital formation since the 1930s. Why is that? How and when is this likely to change?
