Can Green be Green?

French Economist Frédéric Bastiat authored a fictitious letter entitled, “A PETITION From the Manufacturers of Candles, Tapers, Lanterns, sticks, Street Lamps, Snuffers, and Extinguishers, and from Producers of Tallow, Oil, Resin, Alcohol, and Generally of Everything Connected with Lighting” in 1845.[1]

The letter is a proposal from the French candle industry to government asking that regulatory remedies be provided against their “…rival who apparently works under conditions so far superior to our own for the production of light…”: the sun.

Mr. Bastiat continues in the letter, “We ask you to be so good as to pass a law requiring the closing of all windows, dormers, skylights, inside and outside shutters, curtains, casements, bull's-eyes, deadlights, and blinds -- in short, all openings, holes, chinks, and fissures through which the light of the sun is wont to enter houses, to the detriment of the fair industries with which, we are proud to say, we have endowed the country, a country that cannot, without betraying ingratitude, abandon us today to so unequal a combat”.

The lessons of Mr. Bastiat’s letter have been lost on those who are advocating the use of “free” renewable energy sources, or so implies Gabriel Calzada Álvarez PhD. He is the author of the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos research paper entitled, “Study of the effects on employment of public aid to renewable energy sources”. [2]

Dr. Alvarez has examined the direct and indirect costs of so-called free energy and found that like the candle makers, the free energy has rivals which work under superior conditions. His study examines the economic cost of state-sponsored funding of renewable energy projects in terms of economic “crowding out” as well as lost productive capability and finds that each new green job comes at the cost of 2.2 old non-green jobs. Interesting.

Some of Dr. Alvarez’s findings include:
* that since 2000 Spain spent €571,138 to create each "green job", including subsidies of more than €1 million per wind industry job
* that the programs creating those jobs also resulted in the destruction of nearly 110,000 jobs elsewhere in the economy, or 2.2 jobs destroyed for every "green job" created
* The high cost of electricity due to the green job policy tends to drive the relatively most energy-intensive companies and industries away, seeking areas where costs are lower[3]

I don’t know anything about Dr. Alvarez other than the penned this study. It is interesting however that the U.S. coverage of green technology and green jobs is universally, unchallenging positive.

Bottom line: Like the candle makers who wanted legal remedy against the sun, the green industry requires government intervention to protect them from market forces.

T/H: http://rarekate.blogspot.com/

[1] http://bastiat.org/en/petition.html
[2] http://www.juandemariana.org/pdf/090327-employment-public-aid-renewable.pdf
[3] Ibid. p.7-9