German Professor Fritz Vahrenholt Calls Claimed Green Jobs Wonder A “Labeling Fraud”!

I’m short on time today, so this post will be a bit brief.

Germany’s Energiewende and renewable feed-in act are often touted as huge, jobs-creating success stories. But as the prices for electricity skyrocket into the stratosphere and renewable energy companies bite the dust all over Europe, it’s turning out that the green jobs wonder is nothing short of a fraud.

Germany’s Wirtschaftswoche (Business Week) here writes that Professor Fritz Vahrenholt calls the green jobs machine a “labeling fraud”. The bottle doesn’t contain anything what the label says.

Fritz Vahrenholt, former CEO of German power company RWE renewable energy arm, contests the claims made by green industry lobbyists that green energies are a jobs machine. Vahrenholt tells Wirtschaftswoche:

With green jobs, what we have here is labeling fraud.”

Vahrenholt calls the claimed jobs number a product of “naïve calculations”. And according to the statistics office of the German federal government, only 4719 workers remain employed in the production of solar cells and modules.

Yet according to the Bundesverband Solarwirtschaft – BSW – (Federal Association for Solar Business), the number for the entire industry is “around 60,000”.

But this number is wildly exaggerated says other experts and Vahrenholt. Even according to the Centre for Solar Marketing in Berlin says:

Even when you use the very broad definition of the BSW, you can only come up with a maximum of 35,000 employees in the solar industry.”

Anyone looking at a list of solar bankruptcies taking place over the last two years can see that the solar industry is an economic catastrophe.

 

31 responses to “German Professor Fritz Vahrenholt Calls Claimed Green Jobs Wonder A “Labeling Fraud”!”

  1. Buddy

    LOL….

    If you don’t like sustainable green jobs…..and sustainable agriculture…..and sustainable energy……you are REALLY not going to like the future….:)

    Cheers mates…..:)

    1. Ed Caryl

      Your grossly mistaken view of the world is so sad… I really feel sorry for you. Try to prepare yourself for the world in thirty years that has not run out of energy resources, or food, and is no warmer than it is now. If you don’t, you will find yourself in a rubber room or wandering the streets talking to yourself. I am assuming that you are young enough for that to be possible. Most of use older folks have already figured it out. Paul R. Ehrlich was wrong when he was writing in 1968, and you are wrong now, for the same reason.

    2. DirkH

      Buffy, you must be a product of the dysfunctional US public school system. Read about Bastiat’s Broken Window fallacy; Keynesianism is what got you and your country into the hole it is now. Nobody has ever spent himself to prosperity.

    3. Henning Nielsen

      …and if you don’t like a sustainable economy, your future will not be pleasant. Unfortunately for you, a sustainable economy can not include green jobs, the removal of fossil fuels, and the hyped “sustainable” agriculture.

      People who endure an economy in crises, like the Greeks, do not care about the alarmist calls for saving the world by destroying the economy, they have their hands full sustaining themselves. An enforced “green” economy will be just as disastrous as the previous experiments in state-controlled economies of the communist era.

      A new generation always seems to hanker after the mistakes of their predecessors, that’s why it pays to study history.

    4. David Johnson

      I really do feel sorry for you Buddy. You are so deluded.

      1. Loodt Pretorius

        Hi David,

        I do not feel sorry for the troll. He is a fool sitting in a Soros funded chatroom blogging for the minimum wage, and because of his acne and halitosis can’t get a girlfriend. If he cures his BO, shower regularly, change his underwear on a daily basis, use some underarm deodorant, and just generally jack-up his personal hygiene, he will get a life and better prospects. He can only do that himself.

  2. lemiere jacques

    ususally when people want to promote an industry..they try to promote what it produces not the industry itself.

    Green economy is the product you are supposed to buy…
    do you imagine bmw shows its factories instead of its cars?
    Look we have plenty of workers here it is great!

  3. Buddy

    Hmmmmmm….. Pierre….check out this picture and article about Paris:

    http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/03/15/3409951/smog-paris-public-transport/

    Must be all that smog from the alternative energy…..huh?

    Cheers……:)

    1. Streetcred

      LOL! Smog from burning wood (sustainable product) because the disenfranchised citizens cannot afford to heat with electricity. Just like the Greek experiment in Athens.

    2. Graeme No.3

      France gets 90% of its electricity from non CO2 emitting sources it isn’t from that sector. The French have wisely chosen to have little in the way of wind turbines or PV panels, so have a reliable supply and no CO2 from the necessary backup to those “renewables”.
      Since France (5.3) has only 57% per capita of those of Germany (9.6) and 52% of those from Denmark (8.4), with both of the last two having spent enormous amounts on renewables for little benefit, there doesn’t seem much point in your jibe.

    3. Kevin Marshall

      Buddy,

      I welcome your comments, as illustration of the lack of understanding of how to create effective policy. I have posted a full response on my blog, that I hope Pierre will link to. My major argument is that reduction of carbon emissions is a global issue, yet only a few countries are seriously tackling it. No other country will turn to renewables by clearly false claims of jobs benefits, or if experience shows they are useless at reducing emissions. For example, the German experience:-
      https://notrickszone.com/2014/03/07/economics-expert-slams-german-feed-in-act-calling-it-an-abuse-of-state-power-belongs-in-the-dustbin/
      So, for anyone who believes in the catastrophic climate change, any policy country will spend loads of money now and leave future generations nearly all the consequences.

    4. DirkH

      Buddy
      16. März 2014 at 01:41 | Permalink | Reply
      “Must be all that smog from the alternative energy…..huh?”

      Wasn’t it you who linked to pictures of smog in Shanghai and Beijing? That smog comes from unfiltered coal power plant smoke stacks, which produce electricity for the solar panel factories of China.

      Can’t you progressives think more than one level through? Oh wait, then you wouldn’t be a progressive. Sorry for asking.

    5. Mick J

      This is where the French (and others by export) are getting their electricity. Big Nuke.

      http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/france/

  4. Walter H. Schneider

    but Buddy, won’t electric cars cut down on all of that pollution? Maybe not.
    http://www.thegwpf.org/electric-car-batteries-adding-chinas-pollution-woes/

    1. mwhite

      “Buddy, won’t electric cars cut down on all of that pollution?”

      Check this out

      http://business.financialpost.com/2014/03/14/how-tesla-motors-incs-electric-car-batteries-are-adding-to-chinas-pollution-woes/?__lsa=6d71-8a46

      “How Tesla Motors Inc’s electric car batteries are adding to China’s pollution woes”

      1. mwhite

        oops

  5. John Silver

    Stop feeding the troll.

    1. Ed Caryl

      John, but it’s such fun!

  6. lemiere jacques

    buddy, the link between smog and green jobs is unclear…
    pollution is due to car heatin and industry and weather.

    Green germany emits more particules than france because of the need to backup wind mills ans pv so where is your point?
    France has more electrical heating because of nuclear electricity…

    1. Henning Nielsen

      France seems to have kept a cool head and a clear mind through all the years of “climate crises”, at least that is my impression. We don’t read so much of alarmist claims from French institutions, as from the ones in Germany, UK and USA. If this is correct, I wonder why?

      But maybe the time will come at the “world-saving” climate meeting in Paris 2015?

      1. DirkH

        Traditionally the French tend more to the red hue of the green-red spectrum.

        1. lemiere jacques

          yes but we have a try with Melenchon to mate red and green

  7. Casper

    What can Professor Fritz Vahrenholt do against this financial bubble called Green Jobs Wonder? Nothing, because he a public servant. Only Vadimir Putin can open our European eyes:

    http://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article125653648/Krim-Krise-provoziert-Kritik-an-Energiewende.html
    http://www.welt.de/print/die_welt/wirtschaft/article125698597/BASF-gibt-Erdgasgeschaeft-an-Russen.html

    1. DirkH

      Casper; he’s only been a public servant 30 years ago. ATM he’s on the board of various companies it seems.
      http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Vahrenholt

  8. Buddy

    Guys….you make me smile. I feel like I am listenting to the same people who said the onslaught of PC’s wouldn’t change the computer industry…….or that railroads wouldn’t change transportation……

    But I enjoy listening to your fantasy of a fossil fuel future……

    Cheers…)

    1. DirkH

      Buffy; some day you gotta learn about iterative computer models and what they can and can’t do.

      Because you sound to me like a superstitious progressive with no technical knowledge whatsoever.

    2. Moose

      Buddy,

      Your so called ‘fossil fuel’ is in fact highly concentrated solar, wind and biomass energy the earth has stored million of years ago.

      Thanks for your consideration.

      1. Papy Boomer

        It cost less to use the already transformed product by the earth instead of the raw source provided by wind and sun.

        The metabolism of the earth makes it more economical and more user friendly … for less CO2 for the same quantity of energy, more flexibility, more stability. That is the real revolution for quality of live.

        For those who don’t believe that, just go live in a cave, hunt your meat and send your wife and children do the gathering. No shower, no hobby, no retirement, no hospital, no medicine.

        But maybe a real treat for Buffy.

        No wonder he will prefer to die younger.

  9. Alfred Alexander

    buddy, ausgehen bitte! pardon my French

  10. Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup | Watts Up With That?

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