To speed the energy-efficiency grants for local governments, the Energy Department assigned 70 employees in a basement room the task of reviewing its 2,200 applications. Some cities and counties have been able to move more quickly with specific projects, such as replacing lighting in parking garages or buying new air-conditioning systems.
Green Initiative Hasn’t Stimulated Jobs – Alec MacGillis, Washington Post
Joseph Mason looks at the recession two and a half years in and points out that some of the U.S. policies, like government subsidies, support and foster a continuation of the dynamics that fueled the crisis, but there are green shoots in regulatory competition, which are addressing industry and political capture. Read The Green Shoots that are Healthy don’t Taste Good to many Administration Officials.
Green Investing Is Paying Off
Eco-friendly investments have outperformed some of the world’s most important stock indices this year. This has made green investing an attractive proposition, especially with a growing number of world leaders promoting environmentally safe technologies.
uly 3 (Bloomberg) — So you think China’s 6 percent growth will power a global recovery. Think again.
Economists, for example, can’t put a gloss on how ugly Japan’s data are getting. Exports and output are plunging, unemployment is at a 25-year high and those all-important summer bonuses are evaporating. The best we can say is that sentiment among large manufacturers was less gloomy in June than expected.
Where is that smidgen of hope coming from? China, which rarely misses a chance to declare victory over the global recession. Officials in Beijing say stimulus spending and record lending are sparking a recovery in the third-biggest economy.
Export-led Japan would seem perfectly placed to benefit. That is, until you check the evidence. Shipments to Japan’s biggest trading partner fell 29.7 percent in May, more than April’s 25.9 percent. It suggests China’s growth isn’t helping the rest of Asia very much.
China acted quickly to shield its economy from the global crisis. Manufacturing in May expanded for a fourth month. Central bank Governor Zhou Xiaochuan says things may keep improving in the third and fourth quarters.
It’s also worth noting that Japanese exports to China are falling less severely than elsewhere. Shipments to the U.S. fell 45.4 percent in May. Exports to Europe slid by the same amount.
No Engine
China isn’t turning out to be an engine of growth for Asia.
One possible explanation is protectionism, as China works to encourage exports while curbing imports. The country objects to the “Buy American” provisions in U.S. stimulus efforts, yet it is using similar tactics. Another reason may be that China’s revival is more spin than reality.
Either way, talk that China would feed the “green shoots” dynamic that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke introduced into Wall Street’s lexicon four months ago isn’t working out. Nor will the Asia-decoupling theory that’s being resurrected.
Yes, Asia is less reliant on the U.S. than it was a decade ago. Its fortunes are still intricately tied to what happens in the $14 trillion U.S. economy. The longer the U.S. is on its back, the harder it will be for Asia to maintain modest growth.
One reason for a resurgence of the decoupling argument so convincingly debunked last year is actual growth. Even with the U.S., Europe and Japan mired in recession, economies in China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines and Australia are still expanding. That’s impressive given the state of credit markets.
Fast Forward
Fast-forward one year, though. If the U.S. economy is still weak in July 2010, Asia will have a hard time supporting growth from within. At the moment, stimulus efforts are starting from a low base. Over time, government spending and low interest rates may get less traction.
The Asian market won’t close the gap. Much of the region’s internal trade involves intermediate goods used in the production of other products — many of which go to the U.S. and Europe. A world without growth will force Asia to retool economies toward greater domestic consumption without the cushion of robust demand.
What’s more likely is an inward-looking period as opposed to regional cooperation. Groups such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations talk a lot about linking their combined fortunes and outlooks. Meetings, photo opportunities and communiques don’t hide the stark reality that Asian economies compete more with each other than join hands.
‘Buy China’
China has been expanding efforts to help exporters with bigger tax benefits, loans from state-owned banks and other steps. Many “Buy China” directives are coming from Beijing. And don’t expect China to allow the yuan to appreciate much in the second half of 2009, regardless of market pressures.
Such policies suggest China is losing confidence in its 4 trillion-yuan ($585 billion) stimulus plan. They are also a reminder of the limits to governments’ ability to boost growth with public largess alone.
Growth may slip as stimulus spending wanes amid political opposition to a widening fiscal deficit, says Ma Jun, Deutsche Bank AG’s Hong Kong-based China economist. That casts doubts on predictions that Chinese gross domestic product will expand 8 percent in 2010.
The omnipotent reputation many assign to leaders in Beijing is being challenged. Take this week’s Internet fiasco. China postponed the deadline for personal-computer makers to include state-backed anti-pornography software on new PCs after U.S. officials and business groups urged it to scrap the rule.
China is normally a model of implementation. The speed with which it builds state-of-the-art airports, high-speed rail lines and Olympic stadiums is impressive by any scale. Its censorship efforts were exactly the opposite: sloppy and ill-considered.
Economic-stimulus efforts appear to be benefiting from greater competence. That may be a boon for 1.3 billion Chinese trying to get a share of the nation’s growth. The benefits for those outside China are much more limited.
China Will Not Power a Global Recovery – William Pesek, Bloomberg
SANTA MONICA, Calif. (MarketWatch) — There’s a lot of talk about creating millions of new jobs via the “green” economy, one that weans reliance from fossil fuels and invests in alterative energies and technology.
But such a massive shift in labor — figures are for some 5 million new “green-collar” jobs to be created — isn’t likely to happy anytime soon, or anytime at all.
In short, we shouldn’t be betting on job growth from the clean and renewable energy sector, even if it is the fastest-growing segment of the economy right now. That would be a mistake in planning that could stay current policy and keep things relatively inert.
As new jobs are created in alternative energy openings, old jobs in traditional energy companies will be lost. This creates a break-even job scenario. Simply put, a new solar plant creates several hundred new jobs. That energy replaces a coal-fired power plant. The coal plant shutters and hundreds of jobs are lost. Result: no gain.
Moreover, the jobs in the alternative energy sector — beyond construction workers hired temporarily to build or retrofit — need a different set of skills than those who have been working in the traditional energy sector. An oil-rig operator can’t become a wind operator overnight.
This brings me to the real issue at hand: The skill of the U.S. labor force.
A recent study of college graduates shows that for every U.S. student who earns an engineering degree, China graduates five. Never mind those engineers coming out of India, South Korea, and Japan.
The West is losing out on the skilled labor needed for future growth not because we aren’t investing in alternative energy — we are — because we aren’t investing in education.
Sam Newell, a job recruiter for RenewableEnergyJobs.com, writing on the Climate Change Corp. website, says: “Unless the number of students taking science, engineering, technology and math base qualifications in the Western world increases dramatically, this skills shortage will become even more apparent and constraining for businesses.
“It is beginning to look untenable that the new green-collar jobs can be made available only to domestic applicants — in line with [President Barack] Obama’s plans of creating jobs that cannot be outsourced — due to the engineering skills shortage. If we fail to address the lack of available, qualified and appropriately skilled workers, talk of millions of new jobs being filled within the renewable energy sector is likely to remain just talk,” Newell went on to say.
To be sure, I am all for growth in the alternative energy sector. I am all for a clean and green economy. But if this is to be America’s big bet on the future, we have to play our best hand at the world table. And that hand isn’t the green-collar worker.
That’s increasingly looking like a bluff. Our strongest hand is with the graduating student. Yet they don’t seem to be much interested in playing. We have to change that.
Setting our sights on the blue-collar, green-collar or plain old worker is setting them too low. It’s not the collar or the color that matters; it’s the prospect. We should be prospecting for engineers with incentives and investments. Meanwhile, we must get sober about our future.
Otherwise the green economy will pass us by, and the much touted job growth will become more job shrinkage.
Thomas M. Kostigen is the author of “You Are Here; Exposing the Vital Link Between What We Do and What That Does to Our Planet.”
The ‘Green-Collar’ Job Creation Myth – Thomas Kostigen, MarketWatch
