Green jobs in the Spanish renewable energy sectors: an input-output approach

Abstract

After the Paris agreement, the transition to a low carbon economy is at the heart of the debate of the European energy and climate policy. One of the central targets of this transformation proposes changes in the energy mix, moving towards a more sustainable one. In the upcoming years, an increase in the share of renewable energy in electricity production is expected, which will create new green employment opportunities in the labor markets all over the world (i.e., along the global value chains). Focusing on Spain, in this master thesis we use a multi-regional input-output model to quantify the green jobs generated in this transition process. We include an installation cost vector and we analyse the employment creation with green investments under different scenarios for two different technologies: wind onshore and solar photovoltaic. Our results show that, at least, Spain may generate 8.6 and 8.1 employments per million invested in wind and solar, respectively. Indeed, we calculate the spillovers of that investment generating 5 jobs in the rest of the world and 2 in Europe for the wind energy technology and, 5.7 and 2.1 green employments for solar energy. Finally, we find that in the solar energy case, the number of jobs generated could increase up to a 53% in the best scenario compared to the benchmark. The findings of this work will contribute to the methodological and empirical basis for understanding and modelling the energy transition in Spain.