Beck again advanced flawed Spanish study on green jobs

Beck stated as fact disputed study's claim that "you lose two jobs" for every green job created

From the February 23 edition of Glenn Beck:

BECK: The science is bogus, it is falling apart. The newspapers overseas are printing it everywhere. India is pulling out. But us? No, we're still having our politicians tell us that we're not going to be able to leave a planet for our kids if we don't act now on cap-and-trade.

Spain is already proving that green jobs don't work. You lose two jobs for every one job that you create. And yet, people, like Van Jones, a guy who does believe in some of this stuff, he's here to tell you -- oh, yes, no, no, no, it does work.

Beck's claim apparently based on study by Gabriel Calzada Álvarez. The King Juan Carlos University study by Calzada stated: "[W]e 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." Beck has previously forwarded the study's findings as fact on his Fox News program.

But the study has been widely criticized for "lack of scientific rigor"

U.S. Department of Energy: "The primary conclusion made by the authors ... is not supported by their work." In an August 2009 White Paper responding to the Spanish study, the Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory stated that Calzada's study "represents a significant divergence from traditional methodologies used to estimate employment impacts from renewable energy. In fact, the methodology does not reflect an employment impact analysis. Accordingly, the primary conclusion made by the authors - policy support of renewable energy results in net job losses - is not supported by their work." The paper further concluded:

The recent report from King Juan Carlos University deviates from the traditional research methodologies used to estimate jobs impacts. In addition, it lacks transparency and supporting statistics, and fails to compare RE technologies with comparable energy industry metrics. It also fails to account for important issues such as the role of government in emerging markets, the success of RE exports in Spain, and the fact that induced economic impacts can be attributed to RE deployment. Finally, differences in policy are significant enough that the results of analysis conducted in the Spanish context are not likely to be indicative of workforce impacts in the United States or other countries.

WSJ's Johnson: "Study doesn't actually identify those jobs allegedly destroyed." Wall Street Journal reporter Keith Johnson challenged a key premise of the study, writing on March 30, 2009, that "the study doesn't actually identify those jobs allegedly destroyed by renewable-energy spending. What the study actually says is that government spending on renewable energy is less than half as efficient at job creation as private-sector spending." He went on to write: "The money the government has spent on clean energy may have edged out other government spending, but it's hard to see how it could have edged out private-sector spending, especially when the Socialist government there has reduced corporate income-tax rates, most recently this past January."

Spanish government criticized Calzada's study for "non rigorous methodology." In a May 20, 2009, letter to House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA), Teresa Ribera Rodríguez, Spain's Secretary of State for Climate Change, wrote that Calzada's analysis used a "low reliable and non rigorous methodology" and that the data he used are "totally out of keeping with the current reality of the sector." Stating that "the Spanish Government would like to express its views," Rodríguez further wrote:

In Spain, according to the last data of the Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Trade the [renewable energy] sector employs 73.900 direct workers, while other report by ISTAS-CCOO (labour union institute of work, environment and health) estimates 89000 direct jobs plus 99681 indirect jobs, against de 52200 direct and indirect jobs of the Calzada's figures (unknown source). According to data of the Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Trade and of the wind power business association, the wind power sector employed 37730 people instead of the 15000 jobs considered in the Calzada's paper.

ISTAS: "The lack on transparency that exists in the data provided is alarming." Spain's Union Institute of Work, Environment and Health (ISTAS) conducted an analysis of the Calzada study and stated that it contained a "lack of scientific rigor." ISTAS also said that the lack "of transparency that exists in the data provided is alarming" and that Calzada had written not "a study ... but rather an essay providing opinions and written with editorial overtones based on secondary information that is poorly referenced and/or explained and which provides only partial statements of the facts." ISTAS also stated that one of the "real intention[s] behind the document" was to "try and influence the U.S. media."

Study's author reportedly has ties to oil industry

Study reportedly "supported" by oil-funded Institute for Energy Research. Washington Post columnist George Will cited Calzada's study on June 25, 2009, as "[a] sobering report about Spain's experience." However, Will stated that Calzada's "study was supported by a like-minded U.S. think tank (the Institute for Energy Research, for which this columnist has given a paid speech.)" As Media Matters has noted, the Institute's funders include Exxon Mobil Corp. and the Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation, the president of which is an executive vice president of Koch Industries, whose subsidiaries "have been in the petroleum business since 1940."

Calzada is fellow at Centre for the New Europe, which has also taken oil-industry money. Calzada's biography from a Heartland Institute conference states that he is a "fellow of the Centre for the New Europe (Brussels, Belgium)." The president of the Centre for the New Europe has acknowledged receiving money from ExxonMobil in 2005, according to a December 7, 2006, article in London's Independent.