Renewables industry employs 2.3m worldwide

The transition to a low carbon economy will result in a net increase in jobs globally despite the projected decline of fossil fuel industries, according to a new report from US think tank the Worldwatch Institute.

The prediction features in the Institute's latest Vital Signs Update report, which claims that while greater automation and an expected shift in the energy mix towards renewables will result in the coal, oil and natural gas sectors employing steadily fewer people over the coming decades increased employment across the alternative energy industries will more than compensate.

The report estimates that 2.3 million people worldwide are working either directly in the renewables sector or indirectly in supplier industries. The biomass and biofuels sectors dominate employing over one million people, while almost 800,000 work in the solar industry and 300,000 are employed by the wind power sector.

The study predicts that these figures will "swell substantially as private investment and government support for alternative energy sources grow". For example, it notes that the some estimates predict the wind sector could employ 2.1 million people worldwide by 2030, while the solar photovoltaic sector is expected to grow more than thirty-fold over the same period, ultimately creating up to 6.3 million jobs.

In contrast, the report claims that many hundreds of thousands of coal mining jobs have been lost in China, the US, Germany, the UK and South Africa in recent years, and that despite expanding production employment levels will continue to shrink.

"Government officials now have yet another reason to put the full weight of their support behind renewables," said Worldwatch Institute senior researcher Michael Renner. "In addition to protecting our planet and phasing out an increasingly limited resource, policies that support renewable energy also support job creation."