Here’s a curious ritual of American politics: Whenever a large energy project is proposed, the ensuing debate revolves chiefly around how many jobs it will create.
For example, backers of the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline, a contested 600-mile natural gas conduit that would run from West Virginia to North Carolina, have maintained that it would create nearly 20,000 construction and manufacturing jobs.
Similarly, President Trump’s announcement last year that he was reviving the Keystone XL pipeline suggested that it would generate 28,000 construction jobs. On the other hand, The Washington Post concluded that the real number was 3,900 construction jobs, based on a State Department estimate.
Renewable energy advocates play the same game. An Environmental Defense Fund report published last year asserted that the United States’ clean energy sector employs an estimated four million to 4.5 million people. The solar and wind industries “are each creating jobs at a rate 12 times faster than that of the rest of the U.S. economy,” the report said.
