Thread by @AlexEpstein

Supporters of today's "infrastructure" spending-spree say that it will create endless, well-paying "green jobs" to replace the fossil fuel jobs that our government plans to destroy. In reality, green jobs schemes will destroy, not create, millions of well-paying American jobs. 🧵

A largely "green," solar-and wind-based, energy system will necessarily destroy far more well-paying US jobs than it creates because the "green jobs" will be 1) far less productive, 2) largely in China, and 3) cause job losses in other industries via skyrocketing energy prices.

Reason #1 why green energy "infrastructure" policies will destroy productive US jobs: "green jobs" are far less productive than the fossil fuel jobs that our government is destroying--so they cannot possibly pay as well.

The only way well-paying jobs are sustainable in the long-term is if they are highly productive. For example, the reason US oil-and-gas extractions jobs pay very well is that they produce an average of $2 million per worker annually. Nothing in wind or solar can compare.

Workers involved in generating electricity from natural gas and coal produce *9 times more electricity per person* than workers generating electricity from wind and solar. And the fossil fuel electricity, unlike solar and wind, is highly reliable.
theobjectivestandard.com/2021/02/per-wo…

Reason #2 why green energy "infrastructure" policies will destroy productive US jobs: "green jobs" mostly exist in China, which has a huge competitive advantage in mining, processing, and manufacturing.

The main jobs involved in solar and wind energy are mining jobs (to get the raw materials), processing jobs (to transform the raw materials into valuable form) and manufacturing jobs (to make solar panels and wind turbine components). Those jobs exist largely in China.

China's dominance of "green energy" is due to a combination of vices (low environmental standards, human rights abuses) and virtues (lower energy costs, valuing mining and manufacturing). Today's anti-mining, anti-fossil fuel government will make us even less competitive.

Consider Tesla's "green jobs" debacle in Buffalo. Tesla got almost $1 billion plus artificially low electricity rates (at other customers' expense) in exchange for a promise of 1460 jobs--that's over $650,000 a job! This kind of welfare work is totally unsustainable.

Reason #3 why green energy "infrastructure" policies will destroy productive US jobs: by making American energy unaffordable and unreliable, it will destroy American industry and with it, American jobs.

The biggest cost of "green jobs" is unaffordable and unreliable energy. Because unreliable solar and wind can't replace our reliable power plants, they always add costs to the grid. And if we try, like CA and TX, to cut costs by closing reliable power plants, we get blackouts.

Germany, which gets 37% of its electricity from solar and wind, provides a mild preview of the path we're on. Germans have seen their electricity prices double in 20 years thanks to wasteful, unreliable solar and wind. Their electricity prices are 3X our already-too-high prices.

By driving up industrial energy costs, "green energy" schemes will make every American-made product more expensive and every American company less competitive. That means more productive jobs lost to other countries where energy costs less and is more reliable.

For a preview of what "green energy" schemes will do to American industry, consider rising "green joblessness" in Europe and Australia. Like the workers at the Australian recycling company that, after 37 profitable years, went under when "green" policies doubled power costs.

Green energy "infrastructure" policies = "green joblessness."

By shifting us from productive, America-centered energy production to unproductive, China-centered energy production, they would be the largest destroyer of productive jobs in American history.
energytalkingpoints.com/green-energy-j…