Spanish jobs spat revisited

Remember the dispute between the Energy Department and critics of the administration's "clean energy" and climate agenda over a Spanish study that claimed government subsidies to renewable energy industries in Spain cost more jobs than they created?

Jim Tankersley of the Chicago Tribune has a run down of some of the behind-the-scenes activity that ended with an unusual rebuttal from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory to the Spanish jobs study, which Republicans seized upon to combat claims from the Obama administration that government subsidies for clean energy would create millions of new jobs.

NREL responded that the study was flawed. Free-market think tanks and other opponents of the administration’s climate plans cried foul. One, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, used public records laws to obtain emails showing NREL shared its response with groups supporting renewable energy policy, like the American Wind Energy Association, before releasing the rebuttal publicly.

Those emails are the basis for Tankersley piece.