Greening regional development: employment in low-carbon and renewable energy activities

What is it about?

Across the world, regions are supporting and subsidising low carbon and renewable energy (LC+RE) developments, partly in anticipation of positive regional employment impacts. These are often referred to as “green jobs”. Our paper critically reviews existing attempts to measure these employment effects. Drawing on examples from Scotland, we find that the quantification of green jobs is confused and confusing. Existing methods are unlikely to avoid double-counting – particularly around the treatment of activities in the “supply chain” for low carbon and renewable energy activities – and are therefore unreliable indicators of policy success. We propose a method in which LC+RE activities would be separately incorporated within a set of economic accounts, such as Input-Output. This would allow for robust and time-consistent identification of green and renewable jobs, clear characterisation of the supply-chain and a transparent understanding of the drivers of these economic activities.

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Why is it important?

As "green jobs" are widely used as measures of the success of policy in low carbon or renewable energy areas, it is important to identify and quantify these employment. Existing measures appear to be confused and confusing, which is not useful. Our method - the incorporation of such activities in a set of economic accounts, such as Input-Output - has a number of advantages: a time-consistent method; clear characterisation of activity in the supply chain; and a transparent identification of the drivers of employment and economic activity in low carbon and renewable energy areas.