Question: Would you pay more than a million dollars for a job? Probably not. Let’s rephrase that question: would you spend more than a million dollars of someone else’s money for a job? If you’re a politician in Italy, the answer is a resounding yes.

According to researchers Carlo Stagnaro and Luciano Lavecchia from the Italian think tank Istituto Bruno Leoni, subsidies for wind and solar power projects in Italy will cost Italian consumers €566,000 (CAD 716,000) to €1.26 million (CAD 1.62 million) per green job.

Sadly, Italians are already accustomed to paying a premium for their electricity—so tacking on more subsidies to politically-favored green projects likely won’t be controversial.

Green energy is already subsidized through a premium on electricity bills for Italian consumers—amounting to about 4.3% of the average bill and partly exlaining why electricity costs in Italy are some of most expensive across Europe. Industrial consumers are hit particularly hard—in 2008 they paid at least 25% above the EU average for electricity.

Yet, it gets worse, as each “green” job costs as much as 4.8 jobs in the entire economy, or 6.9 jobs in the industrial sector.

More worrying still is that politicians in Italy seem intent on forging ahead with green energy policies when, according to Mr. Stagnaro and Mr. Lavecchia there “is no conclusive evidence” whether such policies will produce a positive or negative effect on GDP created vs. GDP destroyed.

To highlight this problem they note that, to date, the National Institute for Statistics (ISTAT) does not collect numbers for people working in the renewable energy sector. Instead, researchers investigating politicians’ claims on creating “green” jobs have to rely on figures from a range of resources.

“This lack of transparency should ring a bell about the accountability of this program (green subsidies for renewable energy), which is worth billions of euros,” they write.

Mr. Stagnaro and Mr. Lavecchia, on the other hand, are fairly certain that a subsidy-driven increase in green jobs will likely have two effects. First it willl result in job losses from the crowding out of cheaper and more conventional forms of energy generation. Second, there will be job losses in energy intensive sectors—a direct result of higher energy prices required to support such subsidies.

So much for the sweet life.

Energy Probe is a keen supporter of renewable energy. We believe renewable energy has the ability to diversify our electricity supply, while allowing for more decentralized sources of power for consumers. But we’re not in favour of throwing massive subsides at forms of energy that are not technically or economically feasible.

Read the previous gangrene economy report, "Green jobs are the new cash for clunkers" here.