Green energy triumph: $11,000,000.00 spent per job created     

By: John Hayward     
5/9/2013 10:14 am
“Without much fanfare, the Department of Energy (DOE) recently updated the list of loan guarantee projects on its website,” the Institute for Energy Research noticed on Wednesday.  ”Unlike in 2008, when Barack Obama pledged to create 5 million jobs over 10 years by directing taxpayer funds toward renewable energy projects, there were no press conferences or stump speeches.”

Uh-oh.  Why weren’t there any celebrations?  President Obama loves a good celebration.  Why, we just found out about the super-secret star-studded bash he held after his inauguration.

Maybe it’s because the IER divided the $26 billion spent on “green jobs” by the Energy Department since 2009, divided it by the 2,298 permanent jobs created, and came up with a cost of $11.45 million per job.

Ah, the miracle of Obamanomics!  At those prices, we could easily restore the 5 million jobs blown out of the economy since 2009 by spending a mere $57 trillion.

The IER provides a list of projects, loan amounts, and jobs created.  Your calculator will melt if you try to compute the per-job cost of famed boondoggles like Solyndra or Abound Soler, where the DOE handed out $535 million and $400 million respectively to create zero permanent jobs, because it turned out the companies were temporary.  But don’t overlook still-functional triumphs like Granite Reliable, a wind-power company that took $168.9 million in Energy Department loan money to create 6 permanent jobs.  http://www.humanevents.com/2013/05/09/green-energy-triumph-11-million-spent-per-job-created/