UT Economists Doubt “Green” Jobs Economic Impact in Texas
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Green industries promise new jobs but Texas is still dominated by traditional energy.
Federal funds would be better spent on traditional jobs rather than those in “green energy” businesses, according to economists with the University of Texas Bureau of Economic Geology.
“We looked as objectively as we could,” said Michelle Foss, Chief Energy Economist with the Bureau. “And for quite a long time, for the foreseeable future, (Texas) would be losing more than gaining from any policy that caused a diversion of investment away from our traditional energy businesses and towards green energy businesses.”
The Bureau does research involving traditional energy sources like oil and gas.Ā Their analysis published earlier this year adds toĀ challenges to theĀ Obama Administration’s push to spend millionsĀ in FederalĀ funds to promote jobs in green industries.
“There are other sectors of the economy that would deal more bang for the buck. Traditional sectors like construction, transportation, infrastructure in general,” said GurcanĀ Gulen, author of the analysis. He faulted data collected by previous studies promoting green investment as overly optimistic about their effect on creating jobs.
Advocates of green investment counter that thousands of jobs are being created nationwide by investing Federal funds in clean energy endeavors.Ā For example, in Houston, a program to train workers to weatherize buildings and install solar devices has so far trained 379 workers with 110 of them having found jobs, according to SER-Jobs for Progress, a non-profit community group that says it received a $3.1 million Federal grant.
“These are not minimum wage jobs, this is skilled labor,” said Michelle Baker, the program’s training coordinator. “It’s a good time and the right time to do this.”
Advocates for green energy industries point out what the UT analysis also found: green jobs can be hard to define and hard to count so judging their economic impact is imprecise.
“My subjective sense is that green jobs are woven into local economies and it is really difficult to get an accurate measure of the work being done that benefits the environment, reduces carbon, increases social responsibility,” said Tyra Rankin, a Houston attorney who works with renewable energy companies.
The study: