Dr. Gabriel Calzada’s E&E On Point interview is publicly available here, for those interested in learning more about the Spanish renewable-nergy “miracle” our president serially touts as the model the U.S. should follow.

The text teaser to the interview asks how the U.S. can avoid Europe’s problems, which was the subject of my question to Gabriel at his Heritage panel: rent-seekers and other cheerleaders will do in this context what they (disingenuously) do when asked about Europe’s cap-and-trade failure — airily promise that “we’ll avoid Europe’s mistakes.” Ah. Yes. Might you at least let Europe in on your secrets?

The truth of what Calzada says is that there is no way for us to tweak the implementation of such a renewable-energy scheme to avoid Spain’s mistakes — the problems are too fundamental. Spain’s experience shows that you increase unemployment, not employment through massive renewable mandates and spending. And you do not retire any of your base-load generation, so you don’t reduce emissions. Thus both supposed rationales for the green scheme are exposed as unsupportable.

You can’t tweak the Spanish model. You can only avoid imposing it.