The green jobs debate rages on. Some argue that all the stimulus money being poured into green efforts - like renewable energy and building retrofitting – will create millions of new jobs, and will revitalize the economy. Others are not so sure. The latest opinion to be voiced comes out of the Institute for Energy Research, which just published a study challenging the rosy predictions of people like the Center For American Progress (who predicted that $100 billion worth of green investment would create 2 million jobs).

One criticism is that the term “green job” is ill defined. This is certainly true, although the root of the problem is that “green” is pretty ill defined to begin with. There is no “green” sector – all sectors of our economic infrastructure are part of the problem, and fixing all of those parts will have to be part of the solution. And so, a construction worker weatherizing a house has a green job just as much as a solar energy technician.

And so it is difficult to make predictions in the first place, let alone specific numbers like 2 million. But the IER also points out that for all the new jobs that will be created when we start building wind turbines, we will lose jobs at coal power plants. In fact, the impact will go far beyond just the power sector. People talk about how the economy needs to be “restructured”; to be blunt, “restructuring” means that a lot of industries that people depend on to put food on their table will become discouraged, and eventually useless.

Within a week of each other, Google and Microsoft both announced that they were pulling the plug on their home energy management services after only two years of them being active.

Last week, Google said that it was giving up on its PowerMeter online software that allowed people to track their home energy use and pinpoint ways make their home more efficient and end up with cheaper electricity bills.  The reason was that not enough people and utilities were signing up for the free service.

Microsoft has given the same reason for ending its Hohm service, a similar program that offered a sleeker interface and a greater depth of information regarding consumer's energy use patterns and the related costs.  Hohm was also free, but Microsoft had planned to make it into a paid service.

Home energy monitoring and management is a necessary part of lowering our overall energy use and living more sustainably, but it's possible these programs were launched a little too soon.  When smart grid technology starts reaching more areas of the country and people start becoming more accustomed to using technology to tweak their energy use habits, these type of programs will be more popular, but it seems the interest just wasn't there yet.

via Earth2Tech