Employment in Renewable Energy sector

Short description

The indicator measures the share of employment in the Renewable Energy sector. It is expressed as "People employed in RE sector per thousand country's employees".

Meta data

Unit:

People employed in RE sector per thousand country's employee

Original data

Data:

RE_employment.csv

Unit for original data:

Number of people employed in RE sector by country

Date of extraction:

Wednesday, January 18, 2017

Data source link:

EuroObserv'ER

Rationale

Jobs created by shifts towards more sustainable forms of production and consumption help policy-makers and the wider public to legitimise environmental policies. If more people are employed in “green” sectors, they may also express their interests towards policies beneficial for them.

EurObserv’ER provides employment data for many countries and a range of renewable sources. The EurObserv’ER data “covers both direct and indirect jobs and relates to gross employment, i.e. not taking into account job losses in other industrial sectors or due to expenditure and investment in other sectors.”

Limitations

Substantial uncertainty is introduced as the data on indirect jobs includes those from “activity in sectors that supply the materials or components used, but not exclusively so, by the renewables sectors (such as jobs in copper smelting plants part of whose production may be used for manufacturing solar thermal equipment, but may also be destined for appliances in totally unconnected fields)”.1

However, leaving out indirect jobs would lead to an underestimation of the job creation effects.

The EurObserv’ER methodology has undergone change over the years, which means that the data may not be fully comparable from year to year.

Overall, the estimation of jobs induced by “Green Growth” is beset by high uncertainties and is a very dynamically evolving field.2

1. EurObserver’ER. 2014. The State of Renewable Energies in Europe. 14th EurObserver’ER Report. Observ’ER. http://www.eurobserv-er.org/14th-annual-overview-barometer/.
2. Bowen, Alex, and Karlygash Kuralbayeva. 2015. Looking for Green Jobs: The Impact of Green Growth on Employment. London and Seoul: Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment and Global Green Growth Institute.

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The indicator is relevant to the following innovation systems on this website

Renewable energy

The transition of the energy system towards renewable sources is important for climate change mitigation.