As I point out in the previous section, renewables add billions to the economy and create jobs.

“Making the switch from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources could boost the economy. For example, according to a Labor Energy Partnership analysis, the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act alone is expected to create more than 1.5 million new jobs in the U.S. over the next decade.

Additionally, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) 2023 Renewable Energy and Jobs annual review, an estimated 13.7 million direct and indirect global renewable energy jobs existed in 2022, up from 7.3 million in 2012. Many millions more are expected in the coming years.”

But do environmental regulations cost the fossil-fuel industry jobs, as she claims here? A University of Chicago research project says no:

“A robust literature uses reduced-form empirical methods to evaluate the impact of existing regulations on employment levels in regulated industries. Berman and Bui (2001) compare Los Angeles (LA) refineries to other US refineries and find no evidence of changes in employment from increased regulation in LA refineries. Morgenstern, Pizer, and Shih (2002) examine the link between environmental spending and employment across four energy-intensive industries (pulp and paper mills, plastic manufacturing, petroleum refining, and iron and steel mills) and find that increased environmental spending is associated with a small increase in employment.“

“Hafstead and Williams (2018) use a highly stylized two-sector model to show that the effect of environmental taxation is largely a reallocation of jobs (from more-polluting to less-polluting industries) with very little net job loss. Among other implications, this suggests that prior difference-in-difference studies have substantially overestimated job losses in regulated industries and overestimated net job losses by even more.”

Gunasekara is either outright lying, or bothered to do zero research prior to making these claims.

Full contextual analysis of Section 3.4: Environmental Protection Agency here.