Obama’s Green Jobs Plan: Losing Jobs through Efficiency and Inefficiency
Nicolas Loris /
Green jobs have been the foundation to any of President Obama’s jobs speeches. “Building a robust clean energy sector is how we will create the jobs of the future,” he said in a speech last month. We’ve long argued that subsidizing jobs comes at the expense of others and will result in net job losses. Sunil Sharan, director of the Smart Grid Initiative at GE from 2008 to 2009, details in the Washington Post how smart metering will create jobs but destroy many more in the process:
It typically takes a team of two certified electricians half an hour to replace the old, spinning meter. In one day, two people can install about 15 new meters, or about 5,000 in a year. Were a million smart meters to be installed in a year, 400 installation jobs would be created. It follows that the planned U.S. deployment of 20 million smart meters over five years, or 4 million per year, should create 1,600 installation jobs. Unless more meters are added to the annual deployment schedule, this workforce of 1,600 should cover installation needs for the next five years.