Coming out of The New York Times of all places, “Number of Green Jobs Fails to Live Up to Promises.” Unsurprisingly, it has the green groups riled up.
A study released in July by the non-partisan Brookings Institution found clean-technology jobs accounted for just 2 percent of employment nationwide and only slightly more — 2.2 percent — in Silicon Valley. Rather than adding jobs, the study found, the sector actually lost 492 positions from 2003 to 2010 in the South Bay, where the unemployment rate in June was 10.5 percent.
Federal and state efforts to stimulate creation of green jobs have largely failed, government records show. Two years after it was awarded $186 million in federal stimulus money to weatherize drafty homes, California has spent only a little over half that sum and has so far created the equivalent of just 538 full-time jobs in the last quarter, according to the State Department of Community Services and Development.
The weatherization program was initially delayed for seven months while the federal Department of Labor determined prevailing wage standards for the industry. Even after that issue was resolved, the program never really caught on as homeowners balked at the upfront costs.
(Note that it took seven months, as in 210 days or almost 60% of a year, to figure out wage standards for an industry. Good enough for government work.)
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Last month the EPA released its proposed 2012 cellulosic ethanol “mandate.” It suggests that there will be somewhere between 3.45-12.9 million gallons of qualifying cellulosic ethanol produced in 2012, though the number will be finalized in November. Note, as discussed previously, the industry has still not produced any qualifying cellulosic ethanol, and the EPA has consistently lowered the ‘mandate’ by over 90% in previous years. (A recently announced cellulosic plant claims it will produce cellulosic ethanol from, wait for it, corn waste. So much for being a bridge fuel to the future).
In comments on the proposed 2012 production volumes, the ethanol industry begged the EPA to use the higher end of the standard:
In contrast, Brooke Coleman, executive director of the Advanced Ethanol Council, urged the EPA to continue its aggressive goals regarding cellulosic biofuels, stating that the agency’s mandated volume directly affects the industry’s ability to produce fuel. “There is this funny thing going here where you guys have to go out and measure capacity, but the numbers you come out with and the amount of capacity that you put into the Federal Register will have a giant effect on how much capacity we actually create,” he said.
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Much to the chagrin of the left’s environmental base, Ken Salazar voiced Obama’s support for increased natural resource production in Alaska:
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar came to Anchorage on Monday and said the Obama administration supports more oil drilling in Alaska, potentially including offshore Arctic development.
Salazar joined Alaska Sen. Mark Begich and Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed for a meeting with Alaska business people and said the president’s feeling toward Arctic offshore drilling is “Let’s take a look at what’s up there and see what it is we can develop.”
It came with the standard try-to-please-everyone-speak that Presidents must use, showing concern for the unique challenges faced by drilling in the Artic Ocean. But the bottom line is Obama understands that this is something politically he must move forward with, as this is the low-hanging fruit in terms of sparking economic growth before the 2012 election. The support has come at a time when experts are increasingly discussing a potential “double-dip” recession and a continued stall in employment growth. Resource production is one area where the private sector really has “shovel ready” jobs, as it has added jobs throughout 2010-2011. Examples of specific projects in Alaska are here and here.
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The ethanol compromise did not make it into any debt ceiling negotiations and its future is now looking bleaker than ever before. The Congressional ‘super-committee’ established by the debt ceiling negotiations will have to decide by November 23rd some manner to reduce the deficit by $1.5 trillion or face potentially unpopular automatic spending cuts to defense and discretionary spending (though USA Today writes that these “threats” have failed in the past). None of the rumored super-committee members seem to be from regions that would require their support of the ethanol industry
The ‘ethanol compromise’ had legs because it funneled money into the domestic ethanol industry while still maintaining a facade of deficit reduction. It would have collected $2 billion in revenue from the ending of the domestic tax credit as of July 21 and used a small amount less than that to spend on items near and dear to the ethanol industry (mainly ongoing support for cellulosic ethanol and money for the installation of blender pumps at fueling stations), hence their support.
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Senator John Thune (R-SD) concedes that there is little hope for sticking the ethanol ‘compromise’ into the ongoing debt ceiling negotiations:
“We had hoped to be able to hitch a ride on whatever the big debt package was going to be. We assumed there would be a tax title in that,” Thune said. “That unraveled.”
The plan would end the blenders tax credit early, months before the schedule expiration date of Dec. 31. Under congressional rules, Thune and Klobuchar would need to attach their plan to legislation that already deals with taxes.
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Newt Gingrich, like other Republican ‘candidates’ — if you can really call him one — is walking back previous climate change positions:
“I was trying to make a point that we shouldn’t be afraid to debate the left, even on the environment,” Gingrich said on WGIR radio of the 30-second television commercial. “Obviously it was misconstrued, and it’s probably one of those things I wouldn’t do again.”
Odd, the clip doesn’t sound like much of a debate. Gingrich’s decision to sit with Nancy Pelosi and chuckle whimsically about how much they disagree on non-climate related issues has, understandably, drawn ire from the few remaining people who pretend to take Gingrich seriously. The extent to which he truly has no consistent political beliefs is astounding, having provided talking points for every side of every issue. He hadn’t changed his mind 6 months ago when asked:
Gingrich told us Friday: “I meant exactly what I said in that commercial.”
So he meant exactly what he said, except that it was obviously misconstrued, and he probably wouldn’t do it again. Oh okay, that makes sense.
Here is Newt being paid to promote ethanol interests, then denying that he is any sort of ‘lobbyist’ for the industry.
Bob Dineen, writing in Ethanol Producer Magazine:
This may seem a daunting task but the industry has no other choice than to do the hard work necessary to drive ethanol market expansion and accelerate this industry’s evolution. As we have clearly seen, no one is going to do it for us. The success of E15 and the future of this industry are firmly in our capable hands.
That about sums up their attitude. Wouldn’t it be easier if the government would do it for us? Because years of tax credits, foreign tariffs, loan guarantees, national mandates that require other companies to purchase your products, and state support have not been enough. No, they face the daunting task of actually having to convince consumers to buy more of their product than they’re already required to. Poor guys. After the EPA approved E15 for use in MY2001-present vehicles, the ethanol industry is charged with the difficult task of convincing gas stations to sell E15 (and for consumers to buy it) despite it providing lower fuel efficiency per dollar spent.
This time its former Rep. Jim Nussle (R-Iowa) writing in The Hill’s Congressional Blog:
But what people often forget is that the ethanol industry has been suggesting reform for more than a year. We recognized that the industry has changed, and that the policy must change as well.
The blender’s tax credit has been instrumental in developing the ethanol industry, but the most important challenge our nation faces today in securing our energy independence is not the continuation of this incentive, but access to a fair and open marketplace.
We have suggested a pathway that will not only create that market access but continue to provide the necessary incentives for developing the next generation of biofuels – cellulosic ethanol – to help our nation meet our stated goals of 36 billion gallons of renewable fuel by 2022.
Consumer choice at the pump is the most critical component of this plan to help us achieve this goal. Today there are about nine million Flex Fuel Vehicles in this country and the owners of these vehicles have a choice of fuel blends when they pull up to a Flex Fuel pump: E30, E50 or more. But unfortunately, there are fewer than 300 Flex Fuel pumps in the entire nation. Even as domestic automakers commit to making half their fleet Flex Fuel, the lack of pumps to serve this fleet means that most Flex Fuel Vehicles have never run on anything but gasoline.
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From Bobby McCormick at PERC:
Starting in January, the common incandescent light bulb becomes illegal, well maybe, in most of the United States. (Some recalcitrant states, SC and TX to name two, seem hell bent on reminding the federal government of the long forgotten 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, but wasn’t that fight settled a long time ago?) Advocates of this law say that it encourages the use of more energy efficient lighting sources such as CFL and LED lights. It has been noted that a large fraction of the energy consumed by an incandescent light bulb goes to create heat and not light, and that the newer, high tech devices produce an equal amount of light using less energy.
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Arthur Brisbane of the NYT this weekend published an op-ed which reads a bit like a ‘mea culpa’ in response to repeated criticisms of reporter Ian Urbina’s jumbling attack on natural gas hydraulic fracturing published late last month:
I also asked why The Times didn’t include input from the energy giants, like Exxon Mobil, that have invested billions in natural gas recently. If shale gas is a Ponzi scheme, I wondered, why would the nation’s energy leader jump in?
Mr. Urbina and Adam Bryant, a deputy national editor, said the focus was not on the major companies but on the “independents” that focus on shale gas, because these firms have been the most vocal boosters of shale gas, have benefited most from federal rules changes regarding reserves and are most vulnerable to sharp financial swings. The independents, in industry parlance, are a diverse group that are smaller than major companies like Exxon Mobil and don’t operate major-brand gas stations.
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