Assessing employment in renewable energy technologies: A case study for wind power in Brazil

Environmental concerns and the search for climate change mitigation have led to the deployment of renewable energy technologies (RET) in several countries. The adoption of incentive policies, especially those based on heavy subsides, has motivated the discussion of social and economic benefits brought about by these technologies, mainly on the impact on employment rates. In this context, several studies have been conducted to quantify job creation by RET, concluding that the latter are more labor intensive than traditional fossil fueled technologies. However, results for different assessments vary largely due to distinct methodological approaches, and are frequently highly aggregated. Thus, results are not comparable or applicable to other contexts. Previous studies have failed to quantify the effects of imports and exports of RET equipment in total employment, usually associating employment and installed capacity in the year studied. This study has aimed to address these issues, creating an index for employment quantification based on production, instead of installed, capacity. We have estimated both direct jobs in manufacture, construction, and operation and management, and indirect jobs both in the upstream supply chains of materials and inputs to manufacture of wind turbines and construction of wind farms. We have also performed an assessment of jobs created in wind energy projects which are expected to begin operation in Brazil until 2017. The resulting job potential in Brazil corresponds to13.5 persons-year equivalent for each MW installed between manufacture and first year of operation of a wind power plant, and 24.5 persons-year equivalent over the wind farm lifetime. Results show that major contribution from wind power for job creation are in the construction stage and, despite of the low amount of jobs created in operation and maintenance relative to new installed capacity, those stable jobs stand out as they persist over the entire wind farm's life time.