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Amid the IPCC report’s dire warning of extreme weather events, the looming danger of a third Covid wave and gloomy prospects of acute unemployment, new research brings a ray of hope.
A recent study reveals that the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy will bring a surge in jobs both in India and elsewhere across the world.
In fact, the study concludes that jobs in the energy sector are set to rise from 57 million in 2020 to 134 million in 2050.
The collaborative research conducted by Finland’s LUT School of Energy Systems, Universidad Austral de Chile and the University of Jaén, Spain, looks at the net employment impact of a world envisaged to run 100 per cent on renewable energy by 2050.
Generally, there are three kinds of jobs associated with the energy industry — direct, indirect and induced jobs.
According to the International Renewable Energy Agency, the direct jobs are associated with an activity in the value chain of an energy technology, while the indirect and induced jobs include those created by auxiliary activities or as an outcome of enabling energy availability.
Explains Manish Ram, a researcher from LUT: “Direct energy jobs are associated with the power, heat, transport, and desalination sectors. The most number of jobs are created in construction and installation along with operation and maintenance, supplemented by manufacturing of renewable energy generation, storage, and power-to-X technologies. Jobs mainly for the extraction of fossil fuels will disappear up to 2050.”
The findings emphasise that “energy transition will have positive impacts on future stability and growth of economies around the world”. India, Ram feels, could more than double energy sector jobs from around 9 million in 2020 to nearly 20 million by 2050; in the SAARC countries, it could grow from 11 million to over 26 million.
Interestingly, the study found that renewable and sustainable energy technologies are more labour-intensive than extractive fossil fuels while the total energy system cost remains stable.
And by 2050, renewable energy will give rise to nearly 75 per cent of energy jobs— solar photovoltaics (45 per cent), solid biomass heating (7 per cent), batteries (7 per cent), heat pumps (7 per cent) and wind power (5 per cent).
Going by this prognosis, green jobs is what will keep headhunters and policymakers busy in the years to come.
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