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Employees in solar technology in Nairobi
Photo: Thomas Imo/photothek.net / imago/photothek
Global employment in the field of renewable energies reached a new high last year.
12.7 million people worked in the industry at the end of 2021, 700,000 more than in the same period last year.
In 2030 there could be around 38.2 million jobs.
This is the result of a study by the International Renewable Energy Agency (Irena) and the International Labor Organization (ILO), which was previously available to SPIEGEL.
Once a year, the institutes jointly measure trends on the global job market and in the global renewable energy sector and consider these together in analyzes and scenarios.
“The increase in jobs is primarily related to the growing demand for wind power, solar power, solar thermal energy, bioenergy and hydropower,” Irena boss Francesco La Camera told SPIEGEL.
Numerous states and corporations are now investing large sums in renewable energies.
"No crisis in the world, no matter how severe, seems to change that."
Heads of government and business are primarily driven by concerns about climate change and fragile supply chains, which are leading to a renationalization of key industries and more autonomy in the energy sector.
Added to this is the economic recovery after the corona pandemic.
The renewable energy markets benefited from all of this.
However, not everywhere in the same way.
According to the study, the jobs are unevenly distributed across the different continents.
Almost two thirds of green electricity jobs are in Asia.
China alone accounts for 42 percent of the global total.
The EU and Brazil each have ten percent, the USA and India seven percent each.
According to the study, Germany has even lost jobs in the renewable energy sector in recent years.
The Federal Republic lies with about 344,300
jobs
well below the national all-time high of around 416,000 jobs, which was reached exactly a decade ago in the first solar boom.
However, the job market has been able to pick up again recently.
By far the most job-rich area of renewable energies is the solar industry.
Around 4.3 million people worked in this sub-sector at the end of 2021.
The number of jobs in hydropower has also recently increased significantly.
There are also major global imbalances in the renewable energy industries.
Most of the production centers for photovoltaics can be found in the Southeast Asia region – above all in China.
Brazil is a leader in biofuels.
With a share of around 40 percent, Europe leads the world market for wind turbines.
Due to the trend towards renationalization, competition is now growing in all of these sub-sectors.
The USA and China are now also building up a domestic industrial base for offshore wind.
And the EU wants to set up its own solar industry again.
The quality of jobs in the green electricity sector varies greatly - which is mainly due to different laws and standards in different countries.
Especially when it comes to the promotion of certain raw materials for green electricity systems, there are major deficits in job security and environmental protection.
A total of around 257 gigawatts of new plants for the production of green electricity were installed last year.
Sun and wind made up the majority of this expansion with 133 and 93 gigawatts respectively.
In total, green power systems with a capacity of 3068 gigawatts were installed worldwide at the end of 2021.
As a result, people who were previously cut off from a constant energy supply also get electricity.
In developing countries alone, an estimated 2.6 million small and micro-enterprises obtain electricity from off-grid systems.
The number of direct employees in this area was more than 80,000 in India, 50,000 each in Kenya and Nigeria, almost 30,000 in Uganda and almost 14,000 in Ethiopia.
Such a decentralized energy supply not only increases the quality of life.
It also enables the creation of jobs in other economic sectors.
In Ethiopia alone, 190,000 additional jobs could have been created thanks to off-grid solutions.
Such indirect effects are not even considered in the study by Irena and ILO.