A Spanish university study finds that the Spanish government's promotion of green jobs was extremely harmful to its economy:

1. As President Obama correctly remarked, Spain provides a reference for the establishment of government aid to renewable energy. No other country has given such broad support to the construction and production of electricity through renewable sources. The arguments for Spain's and Europe's "green jobs" schemes are the same arguments now made in the U.S., principally that massive public support would produce large numbers of green jobs. The question that this paper answers is "at what price?"

2. Optimistically treating European Commission partially funded data1, we find that for every renewable energy job that the State manages to finance, Spain's experience cited by President Obama as a model reveals with high confidence, by two different methods, that the U.S. should expect a loss of at least 2.2 jobs on average, or about 9 jobs lost for every 4 created, to which we have to add those jobs that non-subsidized investments with the same resources would have created.

But there's more:

• Overall, Spain lost nearly 113,000 jobs while creating their green jobs. Those jobs were lost mainly in "metallurgy, non-metallic mining, and food processing ..."
• Despite a vigorous support of the green jobs policy, Spain has actually created "a surprisingly low number of jobs." Additionally, the majority (two-thirds) of the jobs created came in short-term construction, fabrication, and installation positions. A further one quarter came in administrative and marketing. Only one in ten of the jobs created were permanent positions in operation and maintenance.
• Spain spent €571,138 for each green job created, including subsidies of more than €1 million per wind industry job.
• Each "'green' megawatt installed destroys 5.28 jobs elsewhere in the economy. 8.99 by photovoltaics, 4.27 by wind energy, 5.05 by mini-hydro."
• These costs are "inherent in schemes to promote renewable energy sources."
• Comprehensive energy rates would need to be increased by 31% to repay the debt generated by subsidies to renewable energy.
• The only way for the renewables sector to be "countercyclical" in the current economic crisis is through the provision of government subsidies. Once those subsidies are removed, the industry finds itself in a classic "bubble" condition and facing collapse.
• The renewable sector in Spain consumes "enormous taxpayer resources. The average annuity payable to renewables is equivalent to 4.35% of all VAT collected, 3.45% of the household income tax, or 5.6% of the corporate income tax for 2007."

As a clean-coal blog notes, this echoes a paper by Andrew Morriss et al. on Green Job Myths:

• Green jobs estimates include huge numbers of clerical, bureaucratic, and administrative positions that do not produce goods and services for consumption.
• The green jobs studies made estimates using poor economic models based on dubious assumptions.
• By promoting more jobs instead of more productivity, the green jobs described in the literature encourage low-paying jobs in less desirable conditions.
• Companies react more swiftly and efficiently to the demands of their customers and markets, than to cumbersome government mandates.
• Some technologies preferred by the green jobs studies are not capable of efficiently reaching the scale necessary to meet today's demands and could be counterproductive to environmental quality.

If the net costs are even a quarter as high as these Spanish estimates, the net effect of the American effort to create 5 million green jobs would be significant GDP decreases, a massive net loss of millions of American jobs, and a staggering waste of money.