Leaked Doc Proves Spain’s Green Policies an Economic Disaster

Your first 2 links are transposed

“In renewable energy, often government incentive programs are a key factor in our decision,” said Andrew Katell, a spokesman for GE Energy Financial Services. “We would take the same approach in Spain.”

— Bloomberg
Note that the only bright spot is Spain’s exports of wind equipment — but the Spanish, like the rest of the population of Europe, is growing more and more wary of having their landscape and rural lifestyle destroyed by useless phalanxes of monster turbines. So Spain is exporting them — to the US and Canada, where the public hasn’t caught on yet. (GE, of course, bought its “renewable” business from Enron when the latter went belly-up.)

To these direct costs of renewables must be added indirect costs, as the need for additional investment in networks [the electrical grid] to integrate renewables (about 10% of planned investment in the planning) and capacity payments to the modular backup facilities (coal and gas) that are running a smaller number of hours.

With wind, the catch-22 is that the turbines generate their full rated power typically less than 15-20% of the time in the best locations, but backup natural gas plants have to have the same full rated power and kept on warm standby 24/7. Simply running a quarter of the backup plants constantly at full power (a more fuel-efficient mode anyway) would both save CO2 emissions (assuming for the sake of argument that’s desirable) and save the enormous capital costs of the turbines (about €2 million per tower) and three-quarters of the gas capacity. Plus of course saving the subsidy.
The “renewable energy” fraud is the bootlegger half of the Global Warming scam; Greenpeace and the like are the Baptist half.

Hello from spain.
Just a couple of things to say:
Spain’s GDP is 1 trillion euros, so you can calculate percentages and extract your own conclusions of this crazy green policy
On Spain, energy companies are obligated to buy national coal (which is more expensive than import carbon), but they don’t use it to produce energy because coal energy in spain is less than a 15%. They buy more than they need.
Coal mining in Spain survives only by public money. In 2010, the total amount will be 681 milion €. There are only 7967 workers on coal mining in Spain.
Sorry for my english

Is that a real Gore ad or an Onion type spoof? It made me laugh out loud.

It’s worse than we thought. Well, not really.

For such a green, emission free technology, there sure are a lot of videos of them burning.

This is what climate change alarmism produces. We have to get changed over now before we die. These hard charging policies are going to kill the world economy if allowed to persist. Very gradual implementation is needed. I don’t mind green tech for energy, but common sense needs to prevail. Notice those windmills not turning. Wind energy is a weak alternative. Solar is a little better, but during the winter when there is less sun, and more light time needed, doesn’t work out so well, either. Although it is generally windier during those months.
This is not like introducing new technology into the consumer market. Expensive at first, but as the wealthy start to buy, the price goes down as the demand goes up. If it doesn’t make it, no harm, no foul. But energy is a different beast. It is needed, and any changes the drive the price up can set back, or even cripple an economy. And the world economy doesn’t need that kind of pressure right now. And governments trying to subsidize to buffer that transition are really feeling it now. Kill your sources of revenue, and print more money, all for the sake of the climate. And we elect these people!

This is great news to debunk an economic model that is designed to fail.
How can this wind mill burn while there is no wind to make it turn? Note also that the other wind mills are not turning… expensive equipment to just sit there an not produce electricity.

As Horner says , the report softpedals the facts . What I don’t understand is how the Spanish govt. hopes to meet their objectives listed at the end of the report . What are the chances that our MSM will report this ?

The rush to the green fiasco creates massive national debt.
The green energy jobs are temporary
Spain is running 20-22% unemployment.
Going green creates splendid opportunity for pork, bribes, kickbacks, carbon trading scams and everything but economical energy.
The American Power Grab Act creates 60 new agencies.

How does Obama manage to lecture anyone on profligate government spending and for having an excessive deficit without his face turning beet red?

The health care bill was modeled on a failed one from Mass. and now the energy bill is being modeled on a failed one from Spain. The whole economic policy is modeled on socilism which has failed world wide. What else is new?

For reference purposes, here is an article about the previous damning report from April, as I just found from a link at Michelle Malkin’s mention of it. (Hey tarpon, you still stand by that comment? Is A123 Systems still that great?)
Both sites have the link to the report (pdf).
Interesting info in the Executive Summary, and yes I handpicked bits I find interesting:

2. Optimistically treating European Commission partially funded data[1], we find that for every renewable energy job that the State manages to finance, Spain’s experience cited by President Obama as a model reveals with high confidence, by two different methods, that the U.S. should expect a loss of at least 2.2 jobs on average, or about 9 jobs lost for every 4 created, to which we have to add those jobs that non-subsidized investments with the same resources would have created.
5. Despite its hyper-aggressive (expensive and extensive) “green jobs” policies it appears that Spain likely has created a surprisingly low number of jobs, two-thirds of which came in construction, fabrication and installation, one quarter in administrative positions, marketing and projects engineering, and just one out of ten jobs has been created at the more permanent level of actual operation and maintenance of the renewable sources of electricity.
7. The study calculates that since 2000 Spain spent €571,138 to create each “green job”, including subsidies of more than €1 million per wind industry job.
8. The study calculates that the programs creating those jobs also resulted in the destruction of nearly 110,500 jobs elsewhere in the economy, or 2.2 jobs destroyed for every “green job” created.
10. Each “green” megawatt installed destroys 5.28 jobs on average elsewhere in the economy: 8.99 by photovoltaics, 4.27 by wind energy, 5.05 by mini-hydro.
11. These costs do not appear to be unique to Spain’s approach but instead are largely inherent in schemes to promote renewable energy sources.

It’s worse than we thought.
I’ve long heard that “2.2 jobs lost” figure around here. However, that’s 2.2 directly lost on net per green job created. And only 1 in ten is permanent, so 3.2*0.9 + 2.2*0.1 yields 3.1 old jobs lost over time, period. And every “green” megawatt installed is destroying 5.28 jobs on average elsewhere in the economy. Yup, that’ll add up.
From this I can see two possible conclusions that can be reached:
1. “Green energy” is a job-killing monster that will destroy our economy.
2. We can keep installing “green energy” until everyone is out of work, which won’t matter since we’ll be awash in free energy thus no one will need to work anyway.
The job loss is a linear trend, just like atmospheric CO2 concentration and global temperatures, and the current US government is spending us out of a hole created by debt. So #2 is looking really good and totally possible. We can do it! Yes we can!

Re: kadaka (KD Knoebel) on May 18, 2010 at 11:59 am
Whoops. Did I add those jobs up correctly? I may have mis-interpreted how those “elsewhere in the economy” numbers work together between the jobs-per-jobs and jobs-per-megawatt figures.
But it’s still shocking that only 1 in 10 of those great “green jobs” is actually permanent. Ouch.

So I suppose the syllogism as follows:
a)Spain is onthe verge of public debt meltdown.
b)America does not wish to be exposed to the contagion of that meltdown.
c)Therefore America must pressurise Spain to clamp down on its public debt, while emulating the green energy policies that are powering that debt…
Is it absolutely necessary to have a reality bypass to be in a government these days, or does that just help?

Hey, a bit OT, but just in time to provide comic relief at the ICCC4 – NOAA today announced that Jan-Apr 2010 was the WARMEST EVAH!!!!!

The socialist are experts in newspeak. They managed to carry on for quite a few years in the USSR.

I have no other explanation, except the political left willingly wants to destroy the success of capitalism, when they did not succeed it in open competition Soviet bloc vs West. In the process, they want to create a mass of citizens depending on state and thus to create indestructible base of their future voters.
Do something, because if you fail, we will wake up being loaded into trains like cattle again.

Serious materials is a takeover subsidized window company. They went broke after the mortgage meltdown. They shafted a lot of creditors. The weatherization boondoggle is feeding the shark. The windows get subsidized to the homeowner but on the way, the price tripples. Cube farms, bureaucrats, approvals, paperwork and tax subsidies are behind the windows.

“No more than most of us expected. No doubt Obama won’t get around to reading it, as his sole purpose appears to be to destroy the United States as we know it.”
No doubt he won’t read it – the people in this administration can’t even read a 10 page bill from Arizona about immigration law.

Energy efficient windows? LOL
I can’t believe Americans are making a big deal out of double glazing and politicians get involved. We’ve had them in England for decades.
But then again, England’s elite taxed us for having windows a couple hundred years ago…

UK Sceptic,
“Calling Camoron (spelling intentional) and his coalition/liberal sidekick Chris Huhne (who is our “not gonna renew nuclear and fossil fuel power stations” energy and environment minister), cretins is a massive understatement. Their policies, if carried out, will herald a new Dark Age. ”
It becomes stranger with each passing day. First Cameron appoints Huhne as Minister for energy and climate change to oversee the destruction of the UK energy base, then he appoints Charles Hendry as Minister of Nuclear development to cancel out Huhne.
It’s starting to remind me of the nursery rhyme about the old lady who swallowed a fly, and then swallowed a spider to catch the fly, and then a bird to catch the spider etc. Who will Cameron swallow next to cancel out Hendry?

The parable of the broken window is apt here.
Stepping back in perspective, you can look at it in a slightly more humanist way. We’re deciding to *break* our energy system and saying this will generate jobs in rebuilding it better. The money spent doing this could be spent in numerous other ways. For instance, space exploration is currently underfunded in most nations. Regardless of what you consider to be the greatest threat to the earth from man, the fact of the matter is that mans impact on this planet only increases due to increases in human population on it. It is a true and correct perspective to think that the ultimate conservationist/environmentalist wants to leave Earth permanently. There is no greater way to reduce your impact on Earth than by leaving it and making your mess living elsewhere. Beyond this, there is no guarantee that Earth will not be hit by a life-ending asteroid and self-sustaining colonies on other solar bodies only makes sense if you’re talking about it from a survivalist pov.
So now we’re deciding to break our energy system to rebuild it. This is a waste of time by definition. We’re essentially making work for ourselves. It’s like burning down your house so you can rebuild it when what you really need to do is kick your older children out to make houses of their own. We’re going to spend tremendous percentages of GDP to do this. NASA’s budget is an order of magnitude less as a percentage of the federal budget than in the 1960’s. Right now we spend around 0.5% of the federal budget on NASA, that’s about 10-15 billion dollars. Human spaceflight is a large chunk of that, but smaller still. The impact of the energy plan on just the federal budget is in the hundreds of billions.
I’m sure I don’t need to go further to demonstrate just how wrong this perspective appears. Humanity seems to have decided to look solely inwards at itself, and generally that’s when bad things happen.
If you’re running a household, you don’t spend money adding onto the house so your children and their wives/families can live with you. You don’t destroy parts of your house because the number of occupants is overwhelming efforts to keep it clean. The only real solution to this is to give your kids someplace else to live. Humanity’s children need a viable means of leaving the nest, or it will simply get harder and harder to keep the earth clean and pristine.

Excerpt from: Vincent on May 18, 2010 at 2:05 pm

It’s starting to remind me of the nursery rhyme about the old lady who swallowed a fly, and then swallowed a spider to catch the fly, and then a bird to catch the spider etc. Who will Cameron swallow next to cancel out Hendry?

Does she then swallow a cat to catch the bird? If we can spend and tax our way out of a debt-induced recession then an old lady can swallow a whole live cat.
Of course the proper sequence is to swallow a small frog to catch the fly, then swallow a snake to catch the frog. The snake can find its own way out easily enough, but swallowing some mineral oil for lubrication will help it get through the tight spots.
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Excerpt from: Henry chance on May 18, 2010 at 2:19 pm

60 million dollars raised from “green” investors. If you put green colorant in wallboard, you can double the price. They sell sheetrock also.

They already have green sheetrock (gypsum wallboard) but that indicates the moisture-resistant type suitable for bathrooms.
However, there may be a “green” market for 100% recycled aluminum products, based on recycling some old rocks that had to be cleared away from a site where a future nature reserve -slash- carbon sink is planned to be located. Now how green is that?

Mike – Had you read the article , you might have noticed that the slide show referenced was reported as being an earlier non-government study , not the leaked document . As mentioned above , that study has been around for a while . The second page of the article provides a translation of parts of the current document . Does that help ?

Even if your source is accurate, $800,000 is “catastrophic economic failure” ? Please. And people that have spent their careers in alternative energy development have economic ties to “Big Wind”? Shocking! Think you’ve really blown the roof off something here…

Jim asks, “Which business segment/subsidiary was it GE bought from Enron?”
Enron was a major lobbyist for Kyoto, having made its original fortune gaming outstandingly stupid state energy laws. When they died, GE bought their wind division and many of the executives who designed the strategy. Google for confirmation.

Sorry, forgot to add your “sentence” (paragraph).
“UK are still keeping their nose above the surface only because of the oil, but then again BP might have f.ed that up for UK completely unless the conservatives gets down and dirty begin all that they can be and separate man from state, and from what it looks like now UK from EU, since obviously UK was only a bone to EU as long as UK was on the up and up and, no war to fund years and year and years through two serious downs, and at the same time funding every “green” idiocy known to man, all the while trying to get rid of that nasty sticky oil that takes care of cash business any time of the day every day.”

The total futility of using windpower to generate electricity is demonstrated magnificently in “The Wind Farm Scam” (Independent Minds) by John Etherington (Paperback – 1 Sep 2009)