John Laitner. American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. October 2009.
"Climate Change Policy as an Economic Redevelopment Opportunity: The Role of Productive Investments in Mitigating Greenhouse Gas Emissions” is an analysis of the impact climate change legislation would have on jobs. Laitner’s research report “is designed to set the record straight about the long-term economic impacts of cap-and-trade legislation.”
The author notes that the doom and gloom predictions of widespread job loss and economic cotraction are based on a series of flawd assumptions. These include 1) That large investments will be made in inefficient power plants, 2) “current markets are perfect and changes by definition will cause suboptimal outcomes”, and 3) regulations are inherantly, and purely, costly—ignoring the potential (indeed, the probability) of innovation and productive investments. Depending on the “level of efficiency investments” in each of his models, the net savings in the nation’s energy bill range from $350 to $450 billion by 2030, while job opportunties increase by 400,000 to one million.
