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Energy as an employer

Great to see Al Gore out there last week refreshing his ‘Inconvenient Truth’ by challenging both Republicans and Democrats to raise their sights in the run-up to the November election. And his “100% renewables” should certainly achieve that particular goal!

Big emphasis in his campaign on jobs – and I’ve no doubt that’s going to become a huge issue here in the UK too. The Prime Minister himself is clearly alert to that reality, and liberally peppers his various energy–related speeches with references to the number of jobs that will be created in promoting different strategic priorities.

Bag-loads of salt required with these projections – most especially with the latest gob-smacker that a new nuclear programme in the UK would create around 100,000 jobs. Not a single one of the big energy companies involved as potential nuclear bidders has the first clue as to where those jobs are likely to come from.

Much better to work with the facts rather ditzy dreams. Where I am in the South West, for instance, there are now 2,900 FTE jobs in the renewable energy sector, up from 1,140 in 2005 – equivalent to an annual growth rate of around 37%. This amounts to £215 million of Growth Value Added today, up from £34 million in 2005. And that’s just the start – if the Government gets really serious about renewables, as indicated for the first time in the new draft Renewables Strategy.

It’s not just the potential growth in renewables that is threatened by today’s nuclear nonsense. All sorts of short term opportunities to rethink the current energy mix in the UK are likely to be over-looked by BERR (and indeed by investors). A month ago, for instance, Greenpeace published a fascinating report on industrial CHP which it commissioned from Poyry Energy Consulting which really should make the civil servants in BERR totally rethink their heat strategy (in so far as a heat strategy can be said to exist at all).

The report shows that at just nine industrial sites, the installation of mega CHP schemes would provide between 13,000 MW and 16,000 MW of electricity in providing the heat needed by the companies on those sites. 13,000 MW is the equivalent of eight new nuclear power stations.

And guess what? Lots of real jobs projected, no particular planning issues, no complex design challenges, no particular security risks and no legacy of nuclear waste to trouble future generations for thousands of years to come.


Posted by Jonathon Porritt on July 23, 2008 12:42 PM |

Comments (5)

Jonathan

I think you need to get your 'Economics 101' down from the bookshelf. Those jobs being created are a COST not a benefit of the schemes.

Like the man carrying a red flag in front of early automobiles: a cost, not a benefit.

Posted by Recusant | July 23, 2008 2:42 PM

I agree with Recusant. These are artificial jobs paid for by consumer subsidy. The jobs in the south-wset (where I am too) are all consumer subsidised. The BERR Renewables Strategy is designed to spend £100billion of taxpayers money and at the end of the day (by 2020), this subsidy will create 160,000 jobs and not much energy. This government has wasted £billions of taxpayers money on non-jobs, such as NGOs, councils, Commissions and other talk-shops and bureaucracies that consume wealth and create nothing of value.

Posted by Phillip Bratby | July 23, 2008 10:16 PM

Surely the above comments apply to all jobs. What do private sector jobs do? Generate profits (taken mostly from consumers' wallets) for companies. The profits are then distributed to a handfull of stock holders. How is that better?

I don't know much about economics (in fact I detest it mostly), but surely the cost or benefit depends on the perspective.

Salaries will be a cost to the company installing the wave generators or wind farm, and this will be recouped from consumers ultimately when they sell the electricity.

But the money earnt by the workers will be spent in the UK economy generating a benefit. The South West is a part of the UK that badly needs an employment and economic boost. Wouldn't job creation in that region should be welcomed.

Posted by Scatter | July 24, 2008 12:50 PM

The so called cost of jobs created in the renewable energy sector should rather be considered as an investment. The current low yield of renewable energy is directly related to the the developing performance of the technologies involved in processing renewable sources of energy. However as technologists and strategists have proven the performance should follow an s-curve of performance development over time. That however is providing we make a sufficient investment in human resource at this early stage, the expected future yields are in some ways reliant on the current levels of investments in jobs and technology.

To dismiss the investment in jobs at this stage as a waste would be to condem this technology to the scrapheaps before we have witnessed its full potential.

socialinvestments.com

Posted by Social investments | July 24, 2008 3:23 PM

Social investments: The current low yield of renewable energy is not directly related to the the developing performance of the technologies involved in processing renewable sources of energy. No matter how much development effort is applied, renewable energy will always perform badly, because it is a physical fact that the energy density is low. Hence big machines are needed and they produce little energy at great cost.

The only renewable energy that could work well is that which the sun runs on; i.e. nuclear fusion.

Posted by Phillip Bratby | July 26, 2008 9:29 PM

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