$11 Billion in Green Grants Produces Few Jobs, House Report Says

[Geee]

CNSnews:

(CNSNews.com) – An Obama administration green jobs grant program that spent $11 billion lacks a verifiable job-counting system and likely created only a fraction of the jobs it claims, according to a staff report by the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

While Energy Secretary Steven Chu said the grants “created tens of thousands of jobs,” the government’s own National Renewal Energy Laboratory estimates it created 910 direct jobs.

The House report criticized even those numbers, saying: “The job creation numbers that exist for Section 1603 are based on models, not actual data from completed projects. Neither Treasury nor DOE have turned over actual jobs data on the Section 1603 grants program to the committee.”

The program was created through the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, better known as the stimulus. Of the $22.6 billion allocated, just under half has been spent. The rest is set to be spent by the end of fiscal year 2017.

The grants have gone to 34,140 projects, with $8.2 billion going for wind projects and another $2 billion going to solar projects. The remaining amount went to geothermal electricity, biomass, solar, thermal and small wind projects.

Despite being part of the stimulus act, “job creation is not one of the statutory requirements for eligibility and thus it is not a factor in the consideration process. Because the 1603 program’s primary focus is on domestic renewable energy production, Treasury also does not report on the number of jobs created by the program,” said a March 30 letter to the committee from Richard L. Gregg, fiscal assistant to the secretary of Treasury.