A Biden Subsidy Is Meant to Create Jobs. In This Nevada Town, It Didn’t.

Some Inflation Reduction Act tax credits go to green-energy projects that would have happened anyway

By Andrew Duehren of The WSJ. Excerpts:

"The Biden administration is pouring billions into regions at risk from the shift away from fossil fuels, hoping to create new, clean-energy jobs in places like Moapa, Nev. 

A coal power plant that once employed as many as 300 people closed near this small town about an hour outside of Las Vegas in 2017. Nevada’s public utility has since transformed the site into a home for batteries that store energy captured by nearby solar panels. The $257 million project received roughly $100 million in federal tax credits because of President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, including a $25 million bonus for locating the project near a closed coal plant. 

But the investment by NV Energy, a subsidiary of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Energy, is set to fall short of the administration’s vision for job creation and local economic development. Construction of the site and installation of the batteries required roughly 200 workers over a year. Maintaining and operating the batteries will require about five.

Moreover, those jobs likely would have been created even without the added tax break. NV Energy had planned to make the investment before the passage of the IRA, which gives companies an extra 10% of the cost of solar and wind projects located in “energy communities.”"

"The energy-community credit fuels a longstanding debate over the efficacy of “place-based policies,” when governments use subsidies to try to create good-paying jobs in distressed areas so that residents don’t have to move for better opportunities."

"Bank of America researchers estimated last year that clean-energy projects announced since the IRA would create 86,000 jobs, with 50,000 of those related to electric vehicles. But the administration’s rhetoric about solar and wind jobs has at times frustrated some union officials, who see the work as less stable than traditional utility jobs."