Tim:

Jennifer Thacher, writing on the New Mexico Independent, makes the point about job creation in the green energy world:

What about the arguments that investment in green energy will create new jobs? It is important to make clear whether we are talking about net new jobs or just new jobs in a particular industry.

In other words, are jobs in the green sector completely new jobs or are they jobs that are lost in another industry? As the statement points out, engineers and accountants work in green industries, but they also work in traditional energy sectors. From a purely “jobs” perspective, does it matter if green energy replaces traditional energy, and the accountants and engineers move between sectors?

This may have implications for different regions of the United States and there may be reasons other than jobs that cause me to prefer the green energy sector, but it is misleading to talk new jobs as opposed to net job creation.

I’m actually highly sympathetic to many of the ideas discussed in this statement. Energy production has external costs are not reflected in market prices. Because prices are too low, we consume excessive (and thus inefficient) amounts of energy. We should devise and promote methods to correct for these external costs.

We should also be clear about the road ahead. Reducing energy use and investing in clean energy has enormous potential, but lets not act as if there are no opportunity costs to clean energy investments.

One of the messages I got from the whole framing-media-science-policy discussions of the past couple of years was the idea that I (the media part of that equation) don’t solve problems by providing any one explanation of stuff. So, for example, I can do a story, as a colleague and I did earlier this year, collecting all the things you can do to winterize your house and reduce your energy bills and greenhouse footprint. Nothing wrong with that, but a second, and perhaps better, approach, is to bang people over the head with the message, over and over. The political science types call it “agenda setting.”

Last spring, my boss suggested a weekly energy tip feature. We enlisted Al Zelicoff, a local energy conservation guru, and began publishing a tip, with Al’s picture, in every Tuesday morning’s Albuquerque Journal. Energy costs have dropped since then, removing one of the prime motivations for people to follow Al’s tips, but we’ve kept at it.

Measuring success is hard, but Al gets great letters from readers, and I hear people talking about it all the time. Al’s page is here, and a blog-like collection of tips is here.

Dan Yurman calculates the jobs he thinks would be created by expanding the federal loan guarantees for nuclear power:

The Federal loan guarantee program for construction of nuclear power plants, set by Congress at $18.5 billion, could if expanded to cover the entire fleet of 21 proposed new reactors, create nearly 80,000 construction jobs, and more than 17,000 permanent operations jobs over the next 10-15 years.

I rather think John Whitehead’s macroeconomic argument about green jobs applies here. There are jobs to be had creating the infrastructure necessary to supply our nation’s energy needs. If they are not created in providing that energy through nuclear power, they will be created in providing it with coal, or wind, or whatever. To the extent that more jobs are created by doing it with nuclear energy than with other approaches, that merely means nuclear energy is less efficient.

My analysis suggests we could maximize energy-related job creation by hiring a bunch of extreme athletes to pedal those silly bike machines you see in late night infomercials. Hook ’em up to the grid. All the food they have to eat would also add farm sector employment. Win!

(OK, I’m being flip. Just as Whitehead argues with “green jobs,” there may very well be good reasons for pursuing an expansion of nuclear energy. But job creation should not be one of them.)