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Thousands of New Clean Energy Jobs More Than Make Up For the 50 Foregone Keystone Pipeline Jobs [1]
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Date: 2023-01-12
To our dismay, the pro-fossil fuel propaganda related to the Keystone XL pipeline just won't stop flowing , just like the oil the pipeline itself is leaking . Conservative disinformation outlets are now lamenting the grand total of 50 jobs that would have been created by the canceled pipeline. 50,000 jobs, you ask? No, literally only 50 permanent jobs.
A Department of Energy (DOE) report published back in December finds that “estimates indicate there would be around 50 permanent jobs once the pipeline was operational.”
In addition to this… modest figure, various studies cited in the report estimate that “there would be between 16,149 to 59,468 temporary jobs supported annually during the two-year construction period of the KXL pipeline” (emphasis added). However, the report immediately goes on to note that “the high-end figure overstates jobs, coming from a study that faced significant criticism for including in its analysis project inputs from India, Russia, and Russian companies in Canada, thus including jobs outside the United States, and also including portions of the Keystone pipeline project outside the XL segment in question.”
But the small size of these figures didn’t stop the conservative disinfo machine from complaining yet again about the pipeline’s cancellation . Last week, Republican Senators James Risch (R-ID) and Steve Daines (R-MT) made a stink about the DOE report, with Sen. Risch wailing about how “President Biden’s decision to cancel the Keystone XL Pipeline sacrificed thousands of American jobs.”
Fox Business then ran with the “16,149 [to] 59,000 jobs” estimate and, of course, conveniently omitted the facts that these jobs would have been temporary and that the upper-end estimate is an overstatement. The Washington Times did muster the bare minimum amount of journalistic integrity to provide this basic context, but its article still ended by quoting Koch-tied lobbyist Daniel Turner , who accused President Biden of putting “petty” climate politics before job creation.
The thing is, if you really want to create new jobs, climate policy is a pretty surefire way to do that. Job creation is a major part of the Green New Deal ; just look at the Civilian Climate Corps , for example!
In Georgia alone, the factory building batteries for Ford’s all-electric F-150 already employs some 4,000 people, and— if it can even find enough people to hire —the company will expand to employ 20,000 workers in the US by 2025. Also in Georgia , a pair of solar panel factories will add another 2,600 jobs, adding to the 15,000 expected new jobs at the Rivian and Hyundai EV plants and the 3,500 expected new jobs at a Hyundai and SK battery plant in the state. So, the clean tech jobs in just one state are already replacing the thousands of supposedly "lost" temporary Keystone construction jobs.
And Georgia is hardly an outlier. The DOE’s June report showed that “ Energy Jobs Grew Faster Than Overall U.S. Employment in 2021 .”
Six sectors in particular experienced notable job growth that year: “Electric vehicle jobs increased by 26.2%, adding 21,961 new jobs,” “Hybrid electric vehicle jobs increased 19.7%, adding 23,577 new jobs,” “Solar energy jobs increased by 5.4%, adding 17,212 new jobs,” “Wind energy jobs increased by 2.9%, adding 3,347 new jobs,” “Energy efficiency jobs increased by 2.7%, adding 57,741 new jobs,” and “Transmission, distribution, and storage jobs increased by 1.9%, adding 22,779 new jobs.”
Now, if only someone could figure out which is bigger, the 146,617 new jobs in climate tech created in 2021 or the 50 jobs that the Keystone XL would have created, then we might be able to discern if Republicans really care more about workers' jobs than fossil fuel companies’ profits…
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https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/1/12/2146828/-Thousands-of-New-Clean-Energy-Jobs-More-Than-Make-Up-For-the-50-Foregone-Keystone-Pipeline-Jobs
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