In a world where benefit-cost analysis, not the macroeconomic impact, of environmental is what really matters, the Environmental Policy Institute says that the EPA's climate rule will cost more than advertised (because jobs are costs):
The Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions at power plants will end up creating more jobs than it cuts, according to a new analysis of the proposed rule.
EPA's Clean Power Plan would require existing power plants to cut their greenhouse gas emissions and transition to a cleaner supply of energy. The EPA has previously estimated that the plan would create 120,000 jobs by 2020 but lead to 24,000 job loses as plants move away from fossil fuel energy sources.
An Economic Policy Institute report released Tuesday said the jobs both lost and gained would have "a substantial ripple effect" in other industries. The plan would lead to a net increase of 360,000 new jobs by 2020, the report said.
By 2030, the deadline for state compliance with Clean Power Plan greenhouse gas reduction targets, the plan's employment benefits will have wained, to the point where it would have created a net increase of 24,342 jobs total.
The report, written by Josh Bivens, the research and policy director at the Economic Policy Institute, also warned that consumers and employers could be caught off-guard by higher electricity rates under the plan, possibly threatening between 25,000 and 150,000 jobs.
Job losses are likely to be “geographically concentrated,” Bivens wrote. While he described the plan’s impact on employment as “small (and positive),” he wrote that, “the concentration of job dislocations and the composition of jobs in the losing industries suggest that policymakers should consider complementary policies to adjust and to blunt some of the less desirable outcomes of the rule.”
The impact of the climate rule on employment has been a key aspect of the debate over the plan. Republicans, utilities, some labor unions and states with large coal industries have argued the plan would lead to fewer jobs and hit the coal industry especially hard, given its sizable role in American energy production.
via thehill.com
After 10 years a blogger has a lot of material with which to copy and paste. Here is what I said about this issue on September 12, 2011:
Some people argue that green jobs are a side benefit of environmental policy (i.e., "win-win"). I mostly disagree. In the energy sector, environmental policy should create clean energy jobs and reduce dirty energy jobs. In the consumer product sector, environmental policy should create jobs for people figuring out the best ways to produce goods and services while reducing pollution. Net jobs generated by environmental policy are largely unproductive; these jobs are producing something that people really don't want, which is final goods and services. When was the last time energy efficiency entered your utility function? What people want is cheaper energy so that they can spend money on other things.
People also want clean air and water but the demand for these is very different than the demand for final goods and services. There is no market for clean air and water so people will mostly want those things while at the same time not wanting to pay for environmental policy. Most everyone is more than willing to free ride. But, if you actually ask someone if they are willing to pay for clean air and water you'll find that the demand and willingness to pay is out there. People recognize that nothing is free and if they want clean air and water they must give up something in return.
The green jobs issue plays to the politics that there is a free lunch and only jobs matter in environmental policy. This could not be further from the truth. What matters is the extra market benefits produced: improved health, visibility, recreation and et cetera.
I'm hoping that environmental policy produces very few green jobs. This would indicate that businesses have found low cost ways to achieve clean air and water.
If the economy was tanking then a side benefit of environmental might be job creation. But that is not the case. There are a lot of different ways of looking at the aggregate job market (e.g., unemployment rate, employment-population ratio) and each of these can tell a different story. But, if we are just counting jobs it looks like the U.S. has the most ever.
