Generally speaking, spending on green investments creates approximately three times as many jobs as spending the same amount of money on maintaining our existing fossil fuel sector. The reasons are straightforward. First, clean energy investments are simply more labor intensive. Also, a higher proportion of overall spending on the green economy remains within the domestic economy as opposed to purchasing imports. ...Nevertheless, there was, indeed, a serious problem with the green stimulus program, which was that not enough money went out the door quickly enough. Given that the budget under President Bush for clean energy investments never even reached $2 billion per year, ratcheting up to $100 billion with the ARRA inevitably entailed major administrative bottlenecks. Indeed, the Congressional Budget Office had anticipated from the start that the green investment features of the ARRA would require five years, not two, to be fully disbursed, with the bulk of the overall budget being spent in the later years. However, by the end of 2011, with only about 40 percent of the allocated funds (at most) having been spent, the remaining allocations were cancelled as part of the new mantra in Washington for deficit reduction. ... There are certainly lessons that need to be learned from the spectacular collapse of Solyndra. But the broad-brush claim that all subsidies for renewable energy are boondoggles is not one of them. In fact, if the world is going to have a chance of controlling climate change over the next twenty to thirty years, renewable energy needs to become abundant and cheap. Among renewable energy sources, wind, geothermal, biofuels, and hydroelectric are already either as affordable or within range of oil, coal, natural gas, and nuclear power strictly in terms of costs. These renewable sources will therefore not require major levels of continued subsidies to establish and maintain commercial competitiveness.
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