A transition to clean energy requires high quality jobs

“The Green Jobs Advantage: How Climate Friendly Investments are Better Job Creators.” Working Paper. Washington, DC: World Resources Institute. October 2021. https://doi.org/10.46830/wriwp.20.00142. Accessed 7/13/23)

Clean energy industries are labor intensive. Activities like installing solar panels or retrofitting homes to be more energy efficient are difficult to automate or outsource. By contrast, the fossil fuel industry is highly automated. In the United States, for example, the number of coal workers needed per ton of coal has fallen to one-fifth what it was 60 years ago (Kolstad 2017). Clean energy industries are also experiencing automation and labor efficiency gains, but as of yet not to the same extent as fossil fuel industries.5

While most jobs from clean energy investment are created in the short term during manufacturing and construction, there are also a smaller number of jobs in clean energy operations and maintenance (O&M) that can last for decades. Compared with fossil fuel plants, rooftop solar creates three times as many O&M jobs per unit of investment, utility-scale solar creates about the same number of O&M jobs, and wind creates fewer O&M jobs (IEA 2020).

3.3 Job Quality

Strong efforts are needed to ensure that clean energy jobs are quality jobs. Policymakers need to make sure the industry avoids a “race to the bottom” where the falling costs of clean energy are achieved by cutting wages; reducing workplace safety or job security; or worsening working conditions (ACTU 2020). We look first at developing countries drawing on studies of India, Nigeria, and Kenya, and then to the United States, where more data are available.