IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/enepol/v38y2010i2p919-931.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Putting renewables and energy efficiency to work: How many jobs can the clean energy industry generate in the US?

Author

Listed:
  • Wei, Max
  • Patadia, Shana
  • Kammen, Daniel M.

Abstract

An analytical job creation model for the US power sector from 2009 to 2030 is presented. The model synthesizes data from 15 job studies covering renewable energy (RE), energy efficiency (EE), carbon capture and storage (CCS) and nuclear power. The paper employs a consistent methodology of normalizing job data to average employment per unit energy produced over plant lifetime. Job losses in the coal and natural gas industry are modeled to project net employment impacts. Benefits and drawbacks of the methodology are assessed and the resulting model is used for job projections under various renewable portfolio standards (RPS), EE, and low carbon energy scenarios We find that all non-fossil fuel technologies (renewable energy, EE, low carbon) create more jobs per unit energy than coal and natural gas. Aggressive EE measures combined with a 30% RPS target in 2030 can generate over 4 million full-time-equivalent job-years by 2030 while increasing nuclear power to 25% and CCS to 10% of overall generation in 2030 can yield an additional 500,000 job-years.

Suggested Citation

  • Wei, Max & Patadia, Shana & Kammen, Daniel M., 2010. "Putting renewables and energy efficiency to work: How many jobs can the clean energy industry generate in the US?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(2), pages 919-931, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:enepol:v:38:y:2010:i:2:p:919-931
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301-4215(09)00791-5
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lehr, Ulrike & Nitsch, Joachim & Kratzat, Marlene & Lutz, Christian & Edler, Dietmar, 2008. "Renewable energy and employment in Germany," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 108-117, January.
    2. Jacobson, Arne & Kammen, Daniel M., 2007. "Engineering, institutions, and the public interest: Evaluating product quality in the Kenyan solar photovoltaics industry," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 35(5), pages 2960-2968, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Luigi Aldieri & Jonas Grafström & Kristoffer Sundström & Concetto Paolo Vinci, 2019. "Wind Power and Job Creation," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(1), pages 1-23, December.
    2. Hogan, Jessica L. & Warren, Charles R. & Simpson, Michael & McCauley, Darren, 2022. "What makes local energy projects acceptable? Probing the connection between ownership structures and community acceptance," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 171(C).
    3. Bohlmann, H.R. & Horridge, J.M. & Inglesi-Lotz, R. & Roos, E.L. & Stander, L., 2019. "Regional employment and economic growth effects of South Africa’s transition to low-carbon energy supply mix," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 830-837.
    4. Duscha, Vicki & Fougeyrollas, Arnaud & Nathani, Carsten & Pfaff, Matthias & Ragwitz, Mario & Resch, Gustav & Schade, Wolfgang & Breitschopf, Barbara & Walz, Rainer, 2016. "Renewable energy deployment in Europe up to 2030 and the aim of a triple dividend," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 314-323.
    5. Ortega, Margarita & del Río, Pablo & Montero, Eduardo A., 2013. "Assessing the benefits and costs of renewable electricity. The Spanish case," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 27(C), pages 294-304.
    6. Lehr, Ulrike & Lutz, Christian & Edler, Dietmar, 2012. "Green jobs? Economic impacts of renewable energy in Germany," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 358-364.
    7. Costantini, Valeria & Crespi, Francesco & Paglialunga, Elena, 2018. "The employment impact of private and public actions for energy efficiency: Evidence from European industries," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 250-267.
    8. Muhammad Haseeb & Irwan Shah Zainal Abidin & Qazi Muhammad Adnan Hye & Nira Hariyatie Hartani, 2019. "The Impact of Renewable Energy on Economic Well-Being of Malaysia: Fresh Evidence from Auto Regressive Distributed Lag Bound Testing Approach," International Journal of Energy Economics and Policy, Econjournals, vol. 9(1), pages 269-275.
    9. Sanya Carley & Sara Lawrence, 2014. "Energy-Based Economic Development," Springer Books, Springer, edition 127, number 978-1-4471-6341-1, July.
    10. Mostafaeipour, Ali, 2010. "Productivity and development issues of global wind turbine industry," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 14(3), pages 1048-1058, April.
    11. Ondraczek, Janosch, 2013. "The sun rises in the east (of Africa): A comparison of the development and status of solar energy markets in Kenya and Tanzania," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 407-417.
    12. Mabee, Warren E. & Mannion, Justine & Carpenter, Tom, 2012. "Comparing the feed-in tariff incentives for renewable electricity in Ontario and Germany," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 480-489.
    13. Markus Flaute & Anett Gro mann & Christian Lutz & Anne Nieters, 2017. "Macroeconomic Effects of Prosumer Households in Germany," International Journal of Energy Economics and Policy, Econjournals, vol. 7(1), pages 146-155.
    14. Arvanitopoulos, T. & Agnolucci, P., 2020. "The long-term effect of renewable electricity on employment in the United Kingdom," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 134(C).
    15. Auer, Benjamin R., 2016. "How does Germany's green energy policy affect electricity market volatility? An application of conditional autoregressive range models," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 621-628.
    16. Cai, Wenjia & Wang, Can & Chen, Jining & Wang, Siqiang, 2011. "Green economy and green jobs: Myth or reality? The case of China’s power generation sector," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 36(10), pages 5994-6003.
    17. Jinwon Bae & Sandy Dall'erba, 2016. "The economic impact of a new solar power plant in Arizona: Comparing the input-output results generated by JEDI vs. IMPLAN," Regional Science Policy & Practice, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 8(1-2), pages 61-73, March.
    18. Dr. Christian Lutz & Dr. Markus Flaute & Dr. Ulrike Lehr & Dr. Kirsten Svenja Wiebe, 2015. "Economic impacts of renewable power generation technologies and the role of endogenous technological change," GWS Discussion Paper Series 15-9, GWS - Institute of Economic Structures Research.
    19. Osorio-Aravena, Juan Carlos & Ram, Manish & Aghahosseini, Arman & Breyer, Christian, 2025. "Evaluation of employment effects during the transition of the Chilean energy system," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 318(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:enepol:v:38:y:2010:i:2:p:919-931. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/enpol .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.