According to TPM the "clean energy" sector is booming.
(Exactly what constitutes "Clean energy" is debatable. In recent years every business from the head shop on the corner to BP has tried to characterize itself as "clean," but in this article the concentration is on "solar.")
Author Joel Shurkin notes increased employment in the solar industry and that proportional to the rest of the energy industry, solar is adding more jobs than any other energy source. Additionally, solar companies are active in all 50 states.
Ordinarily news of a growing industry, increasing profits, and demand for employees is laudable.
But only when that growth is organic.
Unfortunately, solar companies are growing because of massive federal subsidies. You do not have to take my word for it. The proof is right in the text of the article, which cites a study from the solar lobbying group, the Solar Energy Industries Association:
"Solar's robust growth in the past years has been the result of a very favorable combination of new, innovative business models, affordability for consumers, rapidly decreasing manufacturing costs and most importantly a strong commitment from the Obama administration and other policymakers in Washington,"
Ahhh! Gotcha!
So even the solar industry's own lobbying group admits that the growth of solar is not because market demand is driving the industry, but rather the artificial impetus of federal money is pumping up the sector.
Why would solar lobbyists be so frank?
Well, because our level of fiscal ineptitude has reached such stupidity in Washington, that most people now buy into the reasoning "if federal funds grew the industry so far, even more funds will make it grow faster."
What needs to be realized though is that this is artificial growth. Of course the solar industry is going to expand if the government dumps money into it. Tomorrow the USG could announce a multi-billion dollar program to develop the world's largest water slide. The next day you would have companies around the country falling all over themselves to hire hydrologists, engineers, and teenage lifeguards.
Real growth is driven by actual market demand. USG interference is a market aberration which creates a false demand and house of cards industry.
A separate solar monitoring group, The Solar Foundation, notes:
Some of the stimulus is coming from government contracts.
The Department of Veterans Affairs will install solar panels at five VA hospitals and already has awarded $78 million in contracts; the Department of Energy has loan guarantees for solar projects which alone would create 26,000 jobs; the Department of the Interior has approved permits for projects which will power more than 730,000 homes, and the Department of Agriculture is now providing benefits for ranchers and farmers go to solar.
None of this information tells us if the purchase of such solar systems was a rational decision or not. Maybe it would have been cheaper for the USG to purchase diesel generators rather than solar (which is likely since once the subsidies are removed from solar is is simply more expensive than fossil fuels).
Even if longterm solar becomes competitive with oil, coal, and all the other things which work but people hate- do not credit the USG for its success. Might it not have been more efficient for the USG to get out of the way to begin with? What sort of industry has it created? One which looks to Washington for growth and to a lobbying group for capital infusions. That sort of nation-state centered approach to capitalism is not capitalism, its corporatism.
And yes, big oil, as well as virtually every other major industry in the country, is in bed with the idea. Ironically, it is the largest firms on Wall Street and the most massive oil companies in Houston who are curtseying about the Capital trying to attract subsidies, tax breaks, and regulation to squash their competitors. It used to be to succeed in business you needed to be lucky or capable, now you need a good lobbyist.
One might make the argument that USG subsidies encourage ignored industries which might not ever develop absent government assistance. Nonsense. Why is some bureaucrat in Washington the great arbitrator of what path to take for what business? Maybe there is a superior, even "cleaner" form of alternative energy being developed in some small business, someplace out in America by some young entrepreneur. But not having a lobbying association, that business person would be a fool to pursue the more attractive energy innovation when they could just start collecting federal subsidies to work in the solar sector. Ironically then, federal subsidies are un-democratic. They squash competition and limit our ability to find new and better solutions.
Central economic planning is not just ineffective, it is inefficient. In addition to the fact that DC bureaucrats are not generally great at directing the market, when they take resources away from the rest of the population to subsidize a select group, they are hurting countless other efforts at innovation.
What is ultimately at the root of everyone's zealousness to applaud the success of "clean energy" is the idea that government can just create and give money away. The USG has no wealth of its own. It can only tax (take money from you now), borrow (take money from your kids), or print (take money from you in a few months via inflation) to generate revenue.
Rejecting that simple proposition means that in order to create full employment, the USG need simply hire everyone and send them all paychecks. The Soviets tried that, and solar energy. Neither worked.