Almost a year ago, the buzz during the downturn was that the economic stimulus will help boost jobs in a sort of national improvement program reminiscent of the 1930s. Our coal would be phased out. Our grids would get smart. Our cars would get hybridized. Well, most of us are still driving the same car, still paying under $3 for a gallon of gas, and still calling the oil guys to put another 250 gallons of fuel in the basement tank. And many of us, if we’re lucky, are still going to work every day.
In the 1930s, the U.S. began building out a new transportation infrastructure based on fossil fuels. Now, fossil fuels are anathema whether some ethically conflicted researchers are right or not. Wind, solar and other clean technology measures—ultracapacitors, hydrogen fuel cells, smart grid—would help us revive manufacturing and restore jobs in the U.S. But that’s not really happening. At least not yet.
According to Kevin Bullis’s story for MIT Technology Review earlier this week, all the hoopla over energy stimulus funding, loan guarantees and initiatives have done little so far to add jobs. Why? Lots of reasons. For starters the only lender in 2009 was Uncle Sam. Of the $45-some-billion directed to energy programs, very little has been actually spent. What was spent was used to help bolster the wind and solar sectors, which got pummeled by the credit crunch and grew last year only through government aid. Much more of it is associated with loan guarantees which are only now coming home to roost.
Traditional manufacturing, meanwhile, got walloped at a scale that clean energy couldn’t hope to offset. Wind energy, for example, which was in a much better position to grow as compared to large-scale thermal or geothermal, only added 8,000 new jobs as a result of stimulus, a drop in the bucket compared to the millions now out of work. And, perhaps unintentionally, many new jobs were actually created outside the U.S. According to research by American University, 80% of stimulus money for wind energy, for example, went to fill orders from foreign wind turbine manufacturers. Not necessarily a bad thing; a few thousand jobs were created somewhere. But it probably didn’t help domestic makers of wind turbines.
The federal government is marching forward, pushing the nation in the direction of energy independence. And some big players are following suit with creative efforts of their own, such as Intel's $3.5 billion VC alliance. But those in need of capital from the usual lenders—banks—are going to be asked to take a seat for a while. Federal loan guarantees may have to shoulder the heavy lifting on rebuilding our nation’s energy supply and distribution framework. Without them, large-scale thermal power plants won’t get up and running. Worse, nuclear plants, like those proposed by the current administration and which are notoriously susceptible to investor caution, will not be in a position to wean us from the energy sources that still, in 2010 and going forward, dominate our economy: oil and coal.
