With Labor Day on the horizon, it was another grim week in green-job news, as a solar panel manufacturer in California’s Silicon Valley shut down and laid off 1,100 workers.
Fremont-based Solyndra, which received a controversial $535-million Energy Department loan guarantee as part of the federal government’s $787-billion economic stimulus package, announced Wednesday that it is closing its factory and filing for bankruptcy protection.
The closure is “a blow to the Obama administration’s effort to create green jobs … [and] a high-profile failure for a federal stimulus program that gives loan guarantees to green-tech manufacturers,” the San Francisco Chronicle’s David Baker reported. Plus, two other American solar companies, Evergreen Solar and SpectraWatt, sought bankruptcy protection in August.
Solyndra’s demise is an opportunity to revisit an article I criticized last week, and to explore more fully the shortcomings in too much of the press coverage of the green-jobs story—namely, there’s far too much bickering about the numbers and not enough exploration of the various reasons why the US is not creating as many green jobs as advocates, both within government and in the private sector, think is possible.
Last week, I addressed a piece by the San-Francisco based Bay Citizen, which ran in The New York Times under the headline, “Number of Green Jobs Fails to Live Up to Promises.” The piece called the green employment targets presented by President Obama and California Governor Jerry Brown “a pipe dream.”
I faulted the Bay Citizen for cherry picking gloomy details from a recent assessment of the “clean economy” in metropolitan areas nationwide and ignoring some of its relatively optimistic findings. On the other hand, I also faulted other critics of the article for characterizing the assessment as rosier than it was. The report, by the Brookings Institute and Battelle’s Technology Partnership Practice, said that growth in the clean-energy sector was, in particular, “torrid.” Yet strong annual growth rates among small companies belie the small number of total positions generated. Overall, the clean economy created half a million jobs between 2003 and 2010, which is not fast enough to meet Obama and Brown’s targets.
The problem with The Bay Citizen’s article was that it oversold the nut, arguing not that green-job creation will be arduous, but that it is impossible. One can see what looks like The New York Times’s effort to temper that argument in its decision to change the headline from the original, “Green Jobs Predictions Proving a Pipe Dream,” to, “Number of Green Jobs Fails to Live Up to Promises.”
Whatever the case, Aaron Glantz, who wrote the piece, penned a blog post for The Bay Citizen’s website responding to his critics, which contained a lot of the nuance that his story didn’t (apparently his editors cut a lot). For instance, he presented additional quotes from one of his sources, Obama’s former green-jobs advisor, Van Jones. In the article, Jones came off sounding like he’d grown frustrated by the clean economy’s lack of growth. In fact, he’d grown frustrated with Republicans thwarting progress, by blocking a mandatory limit on climate-changing greenhouse-gas emissions, for example.
But Glantz also pointed out that his article did, in fact, explore a “variety of factors that have prevented the [clean-tech] sector from delivering broad-based employment.” In one case, he noted, “a $186 million weatherization program paid for by the stimulus has been slowed by federal prevailing wage provisions and delivered the equivalent of only 538 jobs in the last quarter.”
A deeper exploration of those confounding factors, bureaucratic or otherwise, is important. It’s fine for journalists to report that green jobs have failed to meet expectations. That’s newsworthy enough. But what really matters is why they have failed. Answering that question lets readers know whether the barriers are simply high, or truly insurmountable.
Don't you guys understand -- THE UNITED STATES IS BANKRUPT!?!?
We have to get our finances in order first before we can afford "clean energy." Until then, it will be coal and oil and natural gas.
#1 Posted by Mike Robbins, CJR on Sat 3 Sep 2011 at 04:05 PM
NEWSFLASH: Nobody wants solar panels.
When you go to Walmart... You know what you don't see out front with the lawn mowers and new release Blu-rays? Solar panels.
Nobody wants electric cars. Not even with the gubmint doling out thousands of dollars in bribes to convince people to buy them. Nobody wants a car that takes hours to charge and goes 25 miles on 10 degree day (with no heat). Maybe that's why GM is selling less than 3500 Volts a year, huh?
Nobody really believes the global warming silliness, not even most of its proponents. Al Gore just bought an oceanfront home, for example. The meltwater from the polar caps isn't inundating Central Park. The ski resorts aren't going out of business.
The reason the solar companies are going under is simple - the misguided commie/liberal notion that meddling with free markets works to increase market efficiency. And now the taxpayers are on the hook for the utterly predictable failure of this stupidity.
From a scientific perspective, I think Curtis should be investigating the "greenness" of solar technology. How about all the rare metals that go into solar cell production? What does it cost the environment to extract, refine and ultimately dispose of these metals? What about the nasty acids that go into solar cells production? How much CO2 and SO2 gets released into the atmosphere? What about storage? Solar technology obviously requires huge storage facilities to deal with overnight and overcast conditions. Currently these storage technologies rely on lead acid batteries. How much does it cost the environment to produce lead? Or sulfuric acid? These batteries have limited lives. How much does it cost the environment to dispose of these batteries?
WHO says solar technology is "green" (besides commie/liberals)? HUH?
#2 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Sat 3 Sep 2011 at 09:48 PM
Just to let the respondents in on a secret: Mr Brainard's CJR column is about reporting accuracy and journalistic approaches and validity. If you have some issue about solar, walmart or US solvency, try some other location to do your whining and preaching. And btw, China seems to be doing really well with alt energy approaches due to low production costs, by way of US technology. Eventually they will have the brain trust needed to bypass the US entirely. So hang on to your coal, gas& oil. And no, lead acid energy storage is completely outmoded.
el Garee~
#3 Posted by el Garee~, CJR on Wed 7 Sep 2011 at 11:33 PM
Speaking of "journalistic approaches and validity", as I wrote previously, Curtis' readers would benefit for an investigation (from a scientific) perspective of "green" technology in general.
How much energy is expended in locating, extracting, refining, processing and ultimately disposing of the heavy metals and rare earths that go into "green" products?
How much CO2, SO2 and SO3 are released into the atmosphere producing the huge amount of acid required to process the electronic components used in solar cells and other "green" products?
As for storage systems, what about the lead acid storage systems? What happens to the lead after its ripped from mines and spent in storage batteries? What about lithium ion batteries? What's the cost to the environment of producing and ultimately disposing of these batteries? Or Ni/Cad batteries?
What about all the radioactive material released into the atmosphere by mines and refineries? What about the nickel smelters that denude vast swaths of land in Canada and Russia?
It was recently claimed by "Top Gear" that a study proved that the Prius contributes more pollution to the environment than a Land Rover does. True? Where's the story on this?
The readers would benefit from some actual reporting on this issue.
#4 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Thu 8 Sep 2011 at 07:26 AM