North American Windpower: Group Claims Navigant Study Inflated Wind Job Numbers

by NAW Staff on Thursday 07 March 2013

The American Energy Alliance (AEA) is asserting that a study conducted by Navigant Consulting on wind energy jobs was biased and inaccurate.

The study, which was widely cited during the push to extend the wind energy production tax credit (PTC), claimed that 37,000 wind energy jobs would be lost if the PTC were not extended.

According to the AEA - which says its mission is to engage in grassroots public policy advocacy and debate concerning energy and environmental policies, but also has ties to the fossil-fuel industries - says the study was based on “self-serving industry interviews and unsupported wind capacity forecasts that have no credibility.”

AEA says the report found that the Navigant Consulting “significantly overestimated the number of jobs that would be lost as a result of the scheduled expiration of the PTC on Dec. 31, 2012.”

“The study lays bare the macroeconomic distortions and faulty modeling that the wind industry used to justify continued payments of its taxpayer-funded corporate welfare,” says Charles Cicchetti, the report’s lead author.

According to Cicchetti, the Navigant study misapplied models used to substantiate this claim, with the result that potential direct job losses were inflated by at least 100% in the key states that were reviewed.

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