Hope on the Horizon

The decision today from RWE and E.ON not to proceed with further development is one to be welcomed by the people of North Wales. Nuclear energy is incredibly expensive and requires massive state subsidies as well as being potentially disastrous for the environment and our communities.

There are many in Northwest Wales who had high hopes that this would create a huge amount of jobs in that area. However now that the expectation of a new nuclear power station in Ynys Mon has gone a new jobs strategy is need for Mam Cymru. Luckily Wales is still blessed with an abundance of natural resources that can be exploited in the green energy revolution. Green enrgy has the potential to create three times as many jobs as obsolete methods of energy production such as nuclear power, as evidenced in an article on thinkprogress.org.

'2. Clean energy creates three times more jobs than fossil fuels

• A national study showed that job creation in clean energy outdoes fossil fuels by a margin of 3-to-1 — every dollar put into clean energy creates three times as many jobs as putting that same dollar into oil and gas.
• Wind energy has already created 75,000 jobs, which could grow to as many as 500,000 if we transitioned to getting 20 percent of our energy from wind.
• Job quality is better. Twice as many medium- and high-credentialed jobs are being created in the clean economy as in fossil fuels.
• Median wages are 13 percent higher in green energy careers than the economy average. Median salaries for green jobs are $46,343, or about $7,727 more than the median wages across the broader economy. As an added benefit, nearly half of these jobs employ workers with a less than a four-year college degree, which accounts for a full 70 percent of our workforce.
• The clean energy sector is growing at a rate of 8.3 percent, nearly double the growth rate of the overall economy. Solar thermal energy expanded by 18.4 percent annually from 2003 to 2010, along with solar photovoltaic power by 10.7 percent, and biofuels by 8.9 percent over the same period. Meanwhile, the U.S. wind energy industry saw 35 percent average annual growth over the past five years, according to the 2010 U.S. Wind Industry Annual Market Report.

In Europe 1.1 million people are employed in renewable energy. Reports from theBureau of Labor Statistics and the Brookings Institute show that this kind of employment has already started to take hold here and shows enormous promise and potential for the future'

http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/03/28/453122/fact-sheet-6-things-you-should-know-about-the-value-of-renewable-energy/?mobile=nc



With a some imagination and hard work Ynys Mon has the potential to be a world leader in energy production. Fortunatley during the recent Plaid Cymru leadership election Leanne Wood had the oppurtunity to outline her vision for a nuclear free Wales and a Wales that would be able to take advantage of its natural resources for the good of all the people of Wales.



http://en.leannewood.com/?page_id=398



It is interesting to note that those who attacked Leanne's proposals such as Paul Wiliams did so because they felt there would be an over reliance on public subsidies, yet he failed to note that the large energy companies are massively subsidised. Perhaps this is just another example of what Gore Vidal called 'socialism for the rich. The thinkprogress.org article also stated that the fossil fuel energy is far more subsided than green energy.



'6. Fossil fuels have gotten 75 times more subsidies than clean energy

• To date, the oil-and-gas industry received $446.96 billion (adjusted for inflation) in cumulative energy subsidies from 1994 to 2009, whereas renewable energy sources received just $5.93 billion (adjusted for inflation).
• Renewable energy investments should be put in proper historical perspective. According to the Energy Information Agency, “focusing on a single year’s data does not capture the imbedded effects of subsidies that may have occurred over many years across all energy fuels and technologies.”
• The U.S. government is showing a smaller commitment to renewables than it showed in the early years of the oil-and-gas industries. A study showed that “during the early years of what would become the U.S. oil and gas industries, federal subsidies for producers averaged half a percent of the federal budget. By contrast, the current support for renewables is barely a fifth that size, just one-tenth of 1 percent of federal spending.”