Will Turning Green Create More Jobs?

Many people are concerned about the decline of manufacturing in the UK and the number of jobs that have disappeared over the last 30 years. However, there are positive signs that jobs are now being created in sectors that are related to the need to conserve energy and to care for the environment – and the increase in jobs is surprisingly high.

The United Nations Environment Programme commissioned a report in 2008 that shows how employment in the industries that are related to the supply of renewable energy has expanded. In 2006 over two and a quarter million people were employed in these industries. 770 000 people were working in the solar energy industry, 300 000 building and maintaining wind farms and a further 1.2 million people were engaged in growing, collecting or processing the natural materials used to use biomass as a source of renewable energy.

Where Are These New ‘Green’ Jobs?

Most of the new jobs are being created in parts of the world that are embracing technology and developing new ideas to be able to take advantage of renewable energy. The countries who are leading the world in this respect are the USA, Japan, Brazil, China and Germany. The UK does not feature very high up the list. A country like China, which is developing very rapidly, is also very keen on reducing the impact of its growing industrial activities on the environment.

China currently has plans to increase economic growth but decrease the amount of carbon emissions it produces by concentrating on new ways to generate electricity in sustainable ways, using renewable energy sources. This is expected to create around 40 million new employment opportunities by the year 2020. During the next decade, the reduction in jobs in industries that are not based on renewable technologies and that are not so ‘green’ will see 10 million opportunities disappear. But the overall gain in jobs is still around 30 million.

New jobs will also appear in developing countries because of their expansion of renewable energy generation. In Nigeria, for example, around a quarter of a million new jobs will arise as small gas and hydro electric generating facilities are opened throughout the country. In India, plans to expand wind farms to generate green electricity for use in India and in other countries around the world will create almost 300 000 new jobs in the next ten years.

What About Jobs in the UK?

Jobs are likely to appear in renewable technology industries in the UK but these are only just starting to take off. In Germany, the government has put in place a system called feed in tariffs, which means that using renewable energy is must be used to a certain extent by law and there are serious penalties for not moving forward. In the UK, a policy of encouragement has been used, rather than legislation but feed in tariffs will become part of the UK system after 2010.

Jobs will only be created by the ‘green’ energy supply industries expanding and that will only happen as demand grows. When feed in tariffs are introduced, this will happen because industry will have no choice but to use renewable energy for a larger proportion of their energy needs.

Global Pressure

The United Nations Environment Programme report stresses that as more individual countries use more renewable energy technologies, this will create markets for components and services to make the use of these technologies possible. Some of this need will be met from within the country but some of it will be met from outside and the adoption of more ‘green’ industries will create more jobs globally. This may be in the manufacturing processes involved in the equipment used or it could be in support services such as project management or finance.

Green Jobs Are the Way Forward

As the world’s supply of the major fossil fuels, oil, coal and gas, steadily runs out, we will have no choice but to depend on renewable fuel sources to generate the power for industry and for domestic living. Countries that are acting now to embrace this concept are likely to see higher increases in the number of ‘green’ jobs available; those who lag behind could see a decrease in jobs in the next few years, a trend that will only be reversed when their policies change.

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