A new study by Trinomics, in collaboration with DTU Wind, shows that strategically earmarking EU funding for wind innovation and industrial scale-up delivers major economic and security benefits for Europe. By 2040, each €1 of public funding for wind generates €7 in annual economic returns, while significantly boosting the EU’s jobs, exports, and energy security. […]
Except, if I’m not mistaken, wind also doesn’t need much labor, meaning there’s actually a proportional amount of labor is available to be used elsewhere in the economy, so in effect you’re getting (more or less) free energy and free labor. And don’t forget the economic value of not being tied to political upheavals in the Middle East or Russian war crimes in Ukraine and the lower bar for economic undertakings due to cheaper energy a la Jevon’s paradox. Now I don’t know enough about economics to coneifm or deny the €7 number, but you’re underselling the impact here.
Freeing the manpower offsets production to other areas. A net gain for the countries, but the workers will still generate a similar amount of value from an economic standpoint. The gain is already taken into account into production prices, which themselves already include the countries productivity. On the scale of the union and all that is produced, the productivity increase from wind will be very very small.
The rest is a great political gain, but won’t impact macroeconomics much, as energy markets are worldwide. Even the positive impact on the trade balance won’t change the numbers much (even as they change greatly the financial stability of EU).
So it is a very real gain, and if you get all these arguments together it is pretty obvious, just the purely economic result when looking at the economy as a whole is way more subtle that “hey, free money”. It’s really just reallocation. (Macro and micro economics are really two different beasts).