Abu Dhabi: More than 9.8 million people across the world were employed in the renewable energy sector in 2016, and this number is expected to rise to 24 million by 2030, states a new report released in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday.
The report on renewable energy jobs, developed by the International Renewable Energy Agency (Irena), also shows that more jobs are now being created in renewables than in fossil fuel technologies.
“Falling costs and enabling policies have steadily driven up investment and employment in renewable energy worldwide since Irena’s first annual assessment in 2012, when just over seven million people were working in the sector,” said Adnan Z Ameen, director general at Irena.
“In the last four years, for instance, the number of jobs in the solar and wind sectors combined has more than doubled,” he added.
He was speaking on the second and concluding day of the Irena Council in Abu Dhabi. The Council meets twice a year to review progress and approve the work programme and budget of Irena, an intergovernmental agency that is responsible for renewable energy cooperation and information exchange. Irena is headquartered in Abu Dhabi.
Ameen said that renewables are increasingly being recognised as a central component of the global energy transition.
“As the scales continue to tip in favour of renewables, we expect that [these jobs] will more than offset fossil fuel job losses,” he said.
According to the annual jobs report, there were 8.3 million people employed in global renewable energy sectors last year. An additional 1.5 million jobs were taken up in large hydropower. China, Brazil, the United States, India, Japan and Germany accounted for most of the jobs. In China alone, 3.64 million people worked in renewables in 2016, a rise of 3.4 per cent from the previous year.
The report also found that globally, 62 per cent of all renewable energy jobs are located in Asia. And more installation and manufacturing jobs are continuing to shift to the region, particularly Malaysia and Thailand, which have become global centres for solar photovoltaic fabrication.
In terms of sectors, solar photovoltaic was the largest renewable energy employer, accounting for 3.1 million jobs, up by 12 per cent from 2015. These jobs were mainly distributed across China, the United States and India. In the United States, jobs in the solar industry increased 17 times faster than the overall economy, growing 24.5 per cent from the previous year to over 260,000.
A total of 1.2 million people were also employed in the wind sector, which saw a 7 per cent increase in employment through new installations.
Brazil, China, the United States and India also proved to be key bioenergy job markets, with biofuels accounting for 1.7 million jobs, biomass 0.7 million, and biogas 0.3 million.
In Africa, utility-scale renewable energy developments also made great strides, with South Africa and North Africa accounting for three-quarters of the continent’s 62,000 jobs in the renewables sector.
“In some African countries, with the right resources and infrastructure, we are seeing jobs emerge in manufacturing and installation for utility-scale projects. In addition, distributed renewables, like off-grid solar, are bringing energy access and economic development for many African countries, allowing communities the chance to leap-frog traditional electricity infrastructure development and create new jobs,” said Dr Rabia Ferroukhi, head of policy and deputy director for knowledge, policy and finance at Irena.
