A study by a Spanish economist showing that as many as 20 jobs are lost for every “green job” created, has been criticized by the Spanish government as being “simplistic” and “reductionist” and based on “non-rigorous methodology.”
The study (here in pdf) by associate professor Gabriel Calzada, who has received funding from a variety of corporations including ExxonMobile, has been sited frequently by GOP members of Congress in opposing cap-and-trade provisions in a federal climate bill — most recently by Senator Mike Crapo (R-ID) at a Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing on green jobs held this morning (July 21, 2009).
Looking exasperated following Crapo’s comments, Committee Chair Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) introduced into the record a study by the Spanish government that takes the Calzada report to task.
I’ve written about Calzada earlier, here and here.
The government document includes this letter sent on May 20th to Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA) from Teresa Ribera Rodríguez, Spain’s Secretary of State for Climate Change, expressing the official Spanish Government view of the Calzada paper. It’s available here in it’s original form as a pdf file. For ease of reading I reformatted the letter it placed it below.
A second part of Boxer’s submission is a document produced by the government of Navarra, a small region in northern Spain that the journal Nature dubbed, “one of the world’s wind-energy giants.”
As the Navarra report shows, Calzada has the story backwards.
Sixty-five percent of the electricity used in Navarra comes from renewable sources — primarily wind — built over the last twenty years. Over those years, the region went from having the highest unemployment rate in Spain to having the lowest rate, today.
“Under President Obama’s leadership,” the report concludes, “the United States’ decisive support of renewable energies…will aid in rapidly overcoming the current economic crisis…”
The full Navarra report can be downloaded here (pdf).
And, here’s the letter from the Secretary Teresa Ribera:
Secretary Teresa Ribera
Madrid, 20 de Mayo de 2009
Dear Mr. Waxman,
Here in Spain, we are following with great interest, the leading role of the new US administration on climate change, both at domestic and international levels. We are also paying great attention to the works taking place in the House of Representatives on this topic. Regarding the last point, we are surprised by the echoes that a paper signed by Gabriel Calzada on the effects on employment due to the promotion of renewable energy (”Study of the effects on employment of public aid to renewable energy sources’) is having in the House of Representatives and the US Media.
This note affirms that the Spanish policy on renewable energy destroys employment in the rest of the Spanish economic sectors. Although there are several studies of different sources that have analyzed the positive impact of renewable energy policies in terms of employment, and that would serve as answer, the Spanish Government would like to express its views.
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