Most people would agree that an idea of productivity in industrial processes would be the ability to use less energy, less work, to produce the same product, and therefore to produce more and better product with the same input of energy and work time. Technological progress usually accounts for this increase in productivity.
The “Green New Deal,” as proposed by Sens. Bernie Sanders and Ed Markey and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and detailed by their staffs, etc. proposed to replace both 100 million gasoline-powered motor vehicles with electric vehicles, and half of the coal and oil used in residential and commercial heating with electricity. This would require roughly 360 GW of new electric power capacity in the U.S. fleet of power plants. But since at the same time the Green New Deal proposed to eliminate coal-fired power production entirely, including in the provision of electric power for industry, and replace it with “renewables,” about 485 GW of new electric power capacity would be needed.
The problem is that a wind farm of, say, 1,000 MW rated capacity, actually takes 7-10 years to build and its “median performance”—actual electricity generated—is half or less than a 1,000 MW coal-fired plant which takes 2-3 years to build. (A solar farm generates one-quarter or less.) So more like 900 GW of new electric power would be required if in the form of wind power (much more than that if solar), and it will take three to four times as long to add it, than if the new power were in the form of modern coal-fired power plants which release virtually no particulate pollutants or toxic gases.
