A jobs-creation rationale for wind power is marshaled by supporters, almost as a last line of defense. The American Wind Energy Association trumpets the fact that

about $3.5 billion is invested in the United States [wind power] industry, where watt-for-watt, dollar-for-dollar, that investment creates more jobs than any other utility-scale energy source. In 1994, wind turbine and component manufacturers contributed directly to the economies of 44 states, creating thousands of jobs for American communities.⁵¹

The high-cost propensity of wind power is a negative, not a positive, aspect of the industry. Prices reflect relative scarcity, and the price of wind power energy is substantially higher than the price of other electric sources. Resources devoted to wind power are thus wasted in an economy where wants are greater than the resources available to meet them and better alternatives are forgone. Without subsidies, less renewable-energy infrastructure would have been built, leaving consumers with lower-cost electricity. The saved resources (land, labor, and capital) would have gone to a more competitive source of electricity or, more likely given electric-generation overcapacity, to a different endeavor entirely. Electricity consumers, in turn, would have incremental savings to spend elsewhere in the economy. The result of wind power investments in California is the existence of an uneconomic renewable energy industry and an underutilized natural gas infrastructure. Consequently, it has contributed to artificially high rates and a substantial ratepayer surcharge for stranded cost recovery in the restructuring period. (Stranded costs refers to those generation facilities and third-party contracts that are incapable of delivering power at competitive prices in a restructured market; utility companies argue that the public should compensate them for those now uneconomic investments).

Subsidizing renewable energy for its own sake is akin to creating jobs by digging holes in order to fill them back up. The fundamental law of economic efficiency -- "employ[ing] the available means in such a way that no want more urgently felt should remain unsatisfied because the means suitable for its attainment were employed for the attainment of a want less urgently felt"⁵² -- is violated.

Proponents of subsidies for renewables argue that if the subsidies do not continue, U.S. firms will lose out to foreign firms whose governments will continue to subsidize them.⁵³ Tax incentives and government grants are sparking new wind power capacity in a variety of countries.⁵⁴ Those subsidies have resulted in "many strong European and Japanese competitors in the marketplace . . . actively marketing products internationally."⁵⁵ The Yergin Task Force concluded:

Continued cost reductions fostered by [DOE's] strategic research, development and deployment activities can ensure the United States a place in an emerging multibillion-dollar clean energy market. The establishment of footholds by United States-based firms in international sales activity is clearly vital.⁵⁶

Warnings that foreign companies will replace U.S. renewable-energy companies just when commercialization is in sight have been heard since the 1980s -- another argument that is wearing thin.⁵⁷ Not surprisingly, however, U.S. companies are finding the best markets abroad, where electricity is more scarce and the cost of new power is higher. Whereas almost 80 percent of the world's wind power capacity was based in the United States in 1990, less than 50 percent is in the United States today.⁵⁸ As United States subsidies contract, the wind industry will likely be a foreign-subsidized experiment rather than a United States-subsidized experiment as in the past.

Today's renewable export industry is a very small portion of total U.S. energy-related exports. A $500 million annual renewable export industry accounts for under a tenth of 1 percent of the total U.S. export market.⁵⁹ Unwise and uneconomic subsidies abroad do not justify unwise and uneconomic investments at home. Should foreign subsidies result in major technological breakthroughs to make wind power economically and environmentally viable in niche markets, the United States can "free ride" by importing the technology or equipment. U.S. ratepayers and taxpayers would be spared the burden, and, in fact, American consumers would have been advantageously subsidized by foreign taxpayers or ratepayers.