courtesy NASA (our tax dollars at work)
Tweet It sounds too good to be true:
* 100 gigawatts of offshore wind, $300 Billion,
* 100 gw of landbased wind, $200 Billion,
* 75 gw of solar, $300 Billion,
* 75 gw of geothermal, $200 Billion.
* 200 gigawatt equivalents of efficiency – $200 Billion.
* 100 & Clean, Renewable, Sustaianble Energy: 1.2 Trillion.
* 2.7 Million New Jobs and a Healthy Economy: Priceless!
This is happening, slowly, inexorably, by the “invisible hand of the market.” But it will happen faster if the “invisible mind of the community” acts. This means the government!
In his “General Theory on Employment, Interest, and Money ” John Maynard Keynes argued that the only employer with the resources to create large numbers of jobs and dramatically unemployment is the government. It can take risks entrepreneurs cannot because it can’t go out of business. The Keynsians are not arging that government spending – when done correctly – will create jobs and stimulate the economy. They know it does. The only question is “How many jobs will be created?”
To raise revenues the government can either borrow money or raise taxes. It made sense to cut taxes to eliminate the surplus that Bill Clinton’s Presidency facilitated. And it makes sense to raise taxes to deal with the deficits today. Tax rates are such, particularly for wealthy people, that they can help finance investment in infrastructure projects that will create jobs and position the United States for the future.
Investment in shifting our energy infrastructure from coal, oil, methane and nuclear power to a sustainable framework built around wind, solar, geothermal, bio-fuels, and efficiency – clean, renewable, sustainable energy will, according to Bruce Katz at the Brookings Institution, create 2.7 million jobs. By itself this will lower the unemployment rate from 9.2% to 7.4% and cut unemployment from about 13.5 million people to about 10.8 million people. In addition, it will spur growth in other sectors – cars, housing, entertainment.
But will it work? Even if we can power our economy by a paradigm shift to sustainable energy, can we power our lifestyles with wind, solar, geothermal, renewable fuels and efficiency? Between 2000 and 2010, before Fukushima, Germany cut nuclear from 29% to 20%. Renewables make up the difference. After Fukishima, Angela Merkel announced that Germany will accelerate its transition from nuclear and coal to wind, solar and efficiency technologies. Germany will be at 40% renewable by 2025. They will be at 100% renewables by mid-century.
We can do this here – 100% renewable for about $1.2 Trillion – about the cost of the war in Iraq:
* 100 gigawatts of offshore wind, $300 Billion,
* 100 gw of landbase wind, $200 Billion,
* 75 gw of solar, $300 Billion,
* 75 gw of geothermal, $200 Billion,
* 200 gigawatt equivalents of efficiency – $200 Billion,
* 100 & Clean, Renewable, Sustaianble Energy: 1.2 Trillion,
* 2.7 Million New Jobs and a Healthy Economy, Priceless!
There are environmental impacts – wind turbines make noise, solar energy require various heavy metals in the manufacturing processes. However, these are negligible compared to the arsenic, lead, mercury, uranium, zinc and other heavy metals released when coal is mined, processed, transported and burn, or the tritium and the other radioactive wastes produced by “business as usual” operation of nuclear power.
New renewable energy systems are also cheaper to build than new coal, oil, methane, and nuclear. New nuclear is probably on the order of $6 to $10 billion per gw, new coal w carbon sequestration is $18 b / gw. The costs of new oil and methane w sequestration are probably on the order of coal.
But … it means the government must act!