Those behind the greatest economic and environmental scam in history, still pretend that there’s millions of groovy Green jobs in the making – as long as the massive subsidies keep heading in their direction. Trouble is, all the evidence suggests otherwise.
Depriving your economy of reliable and affordable power is the fastest way to wreck it – precisely the result of the policies adopted by every country currently obsessed with subsidised wind and solar.
Increase power prices, as with any input cost, and profits inevitably diminish. Meaningful employment depends upon healthy and sustainable profits. So, as any student of that dismal science will readily tell you, any policy that drives up power prices will inevitably drive up unemployment rates. It’s that relationship that provides a starting point for David Turver’s analysis below.
Subsidised Green Jobs Killing Real Jobs
Substack
David Turver
3 February 2023
Since at least 2009, politicians of all stripes have been calling for variants of a Green Job Revolution. Gordon Brown promised to add 400,000 new “green” jobs, taking the total to 1.3m by 2017. More recently, the Labour Party has called for a Green Prosperity Plan to make Britain a green growth superpower. The Liberal Democrats have their own plans for green energy and a transport revolution. The Conservative Government has a 10-point plan for a green industrial revolution. Of course, for the Green Party no plan from any other party is ever enough and they always urge more action more quickly. Others, such as Ben Pile have covered the abject failure of these policies to deliver their objectives. Suffice to say, according to the ONS, there were only 207,000 people working in the “green” sector in 2020, fewer than even the increase promised by Gordon Brown in 2009.
As was shown in earlier articles, there are lots of hidden costs to renewables and expensive electricity leads to lower productivity and economic growth. When researching those articles, it became apparent that the productivity of the electricity production sector had been falling. The purpose of this article is to look at the productivity of electricity production and the impact on other sectors.
Productivity of Electricity Production
As two figures from a previous article indicate, the electricity sector looks to be high growth and high productivity, coupled with high investment intensity. However, another way of looking at the productivity of the electricity generation sector is output in TWh per hour worked. Combining data from the ONS and BEIS, it can be seen that the amount of electricity we supply has fallen and the number of hours worked in the sector has risen as shown in Figure 1.
This has resulted in a steady fall in the output productivity of the sector as measured by TWH per millions hours worked as shown in Figure 2.
It should be noted that many of the jobs in the intermittent renewable energy sector are subsidised jobs. Subsidised by Renewable Obligation Certificates (ROCs), Contracts for Difference (CfDs) and Feed-in-Tariff payments (FiTs). Plus, we all have to pay the grid balancing costs required because of the intermittency of wind and solar power.
Jobs in Productive Sectors
Now let’s take a look at what’s happened to employment in energy intensive industries. As Figure 3 shows, in 1997, there were some 2,248m hours worked in the sector. This had fallen to 1,550m by 2008 and fell another 20% or so to 1,237m hours in 2021.
By contrast, hours worked in electricity (plus gas and compressed air) rose nearly 25% from 208m hours in 2008 to 259m hours in 2021. Pulling it all together in Figure 4, the gain in electricity production of 51m hours was offset by a loss of 312m hours in energy intensive industries.
In other words, the loss in highly productive industries was some six times higher than the gain in subsidised electricity production.
It is difficult to believe that subsidising jobs in primary electricity production at the expense of highly productive jobs in the private sector is good for the long term health of the economy.
Substack
STOP THESE THINGS 
When will common sense supported by these hard but uncomfortable facts start to get through to the ideology of the greens dogma. We pillory ourselves in the UK by letting the greens drive the agenda and yet we are .09% of the carbon emission whilst China and Russia press on regardless at 34%.
Congratulations on the closure of Liddell coal fired power station Australia. As one door closes another door opens… in CHINA!
And so does another modern, efficient, stable and bang up to date HELE coal fired power station, powered by Australian coal!
So what precisely have we achieved with this ideological experiment in self harm, other than a threat to the National Security of the Nation? There’s an energy transition underway, that’s for sure. And it’s from the West… to China and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or to put it another way, the USSR!
This is the war you are having when you’re not having a war.
Bastiat’s broken window economics, squared.
Reblogged this on whatyareckon and commented:
Ruin the economy it will do!
Regardless of CO2 levels, ice on Greenland & Antarctica will continue to melt as the last Ice Age comes to a final end. Melting is increasingly confirmed by a number of sources.
In the past AU oceans were some 70 metres below current levels.
In South-east Asia places once dry are now nearly waist deep at high tide. This has happened in living memory.
Comments re what will happen to creatures reliant on frozen areas (STT 2022/09/28 & 2022/11/11) don’t appear to have been addressed by any organisation, as expected.
The find of a part trunk & root in Antarctica tends to support the belief that the continent was once forested. And not generally mentioned is the deforestation of much of Europe pre the Industrial Revolution; being blamed for CO2 climate change.
Cost of living is increasing while income & social services are decreasing. This has a correlation with all the subsidies to RE. Along with increasing anti China/Russia sentiments, mass shootings in USA, and urban warfare practice in Ukraine.
Modern ‘divide & conquer’ practice sees countries specialising in producing a minimum number of products mandating supportive connections between nations.
Since the 1985 ‘Thatcherism’ of privatisation, deindustrialisation and globalisation (private financial centralisation in the Bank of International Settlements; bank of central banks) public debt has steadily increased, under Malthusian philosophy. AU Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe as an International Monetary Fund (same building as BIS) director and chair of its Asian branch is helping increase debt.
Under the compulsory education system (AU now starts with increased subsidy daycare for 3 year old’s) most people base their understanding of politics on what they see of politicians. But that’s not politics, they’re just the shopfront.
In 1937 Labor party leader John Curtin stated, “If the Government…excludes itself from …making or changing of monetary policy it cannot govern except in a secondary degree.”
Apparently AU PM Anthony Albanese and Treasurer Jim Chalmers do not agree and want to get deeper into that implemented in 1985. Paul Keating has pointed out that of the AUKUS countries only AU taxpayers are footing the bill for the nuclear submarines; use will be directed by the leading alliance members.
See comment 2022/01/28 of The Coming War On China (YouTube) that reveals USA taking over all Japanese WWII possessions & dominating by various methods including establishing financial trade as was done for electrical transformer supply from Taiwan.
In AU’s case we are still paying for being saved by USA after Britain’s Brisbane Line north-west sacrifice intention.
Unfortunately past AU leaders like Malcolm Fraser (Dangerous Allies), Bob Hawke’s repeated calls for nuclear energy, John Howard on the removal of states in our Federation, and Keating, appear to come to sensibility after retiring.
Who can do what King Canute could not?