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ePaper created 2014-06-03, 15:03:20 | version 1.30.01
62 02 MARKET AND INDUSTRY TRENDS SIDEBAR 6. JOBS IN RENEWABLE ENERGY AND RELATED FIGURES As the slow recovery in the global economy fails to invigorate labour markets, the issue of job creation has come to the forefront of the policymaking debate and strategic choices made by countries. Globally, an estimated 6.5 million peoplei worked directly or indirectly in the renewable energy sector, based on a wide range of studies primarily from the period 2012 to 2013. (See Table 1 and Figure 22.) Recent trends in renewable energy prices and investment have affected job creation across the value chain. Employment is also shaped by regional shifts, industry realignments, growing competition, advances in technologies and manufacturing processes, and the impacts of austerity and policy uncertainty. For instance, although declining prices of solar PV and wind equipment are introducing new challenges for suppliers and affecting manufacturing jobs, they are also driving employment growth in installation and operations and maintenance. Employment in solar PV manufacturing has experienced some turbulence as intensified competition, overcapacities, and tumbling prices have caused layoffs. But surging demand in countries such as China and Japan has eased some of the oversupply concerns, and jobs in the other segments of the value chain continue to grow, making solar PV the largest employer. The next largest employer is the biofuels value chain, with 1.45 million jobs. The United States is the largest producer while Brazil’s sugarcane-based ethanol industry is the largest employer. Wind employment was affected during 2013 by policy uncertainty, which led to a significant drop in new U.S. installations and to weak markets in Europe and India. This was offset by positive impulses in China and Canada. In offshore wind, Europe accounted for the bulk of global employment with 58,000 jobs, the U.K. being the leader. Discrepancies exist among available sources for solar heating/ cooling, but the most recent estimates suggest some half million jobs globally. The remaining renewable energy technologies are less dynamic and employ far fewer people. Renewable energy employment continues to advance to more and more countries, but the bulk of employment remains concentrated in just a few: China, Brazil, the United States, India, Bangladesh, and some countries in the EU. China remains the largest employer in the sector, with 60% of employment concentrated in solar PV and a marked shift towards jobs in the installation segment of the value chain in 2013. Solar water heating jobs showed a significant reduction that year, possibly due to a change in the estimation method. In 2012, the latest year for which data are available, the EU saw significant employment gains in the wind and bio-power sectors and large losses in solar PV. Biofuels, biogas, and geothermal showed small gains, and the heat pump and solar thermal sectors had small losses. Germany remains the dominant force in European renewable energy employment. In the United States, employment in the solar energy sector has been rising rapidly, mostly in solar PV project development and installation. In the wind industry, manufacturing capacity has grownstrongly,butthestop-and-gonatureofthenationalsupport mechanism triggers periodic fluctuations in employment. No updated numbers are available for India. A recent study suggests that employment in wind and grid-connected solar PV remains at the level of 2009. Solar PV manufacturers have struggled in the face of cheap panel imports from China. In 2013, global employment continued to grow, with noteworthy shifts in the breakdown along the segments of the value chain. More analysis of renewable energy employment patterns is required for a thorough understanding of the underlying dynamics. i - This global number, estimated by IRENA, should not be understood as a direct, year-on-year comparison with the IRENA estimate of 5.7 million jobs in the GSR 2013, but rather as an ongoing effort to refine the data. Global statistics remain incomplete, methodologies are not harmonised, and the different studies used are of uneven quality. These numbers are based on a wide range of studies, focused primarily on the years 2012–2013. Source: See Endnote 83 for this section.