Wind Power and Job Creation

2014

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.

2016

Investment in wind power has grown remarkably in the past decades in the European Union, and in particular in Portugal. Although support for incentive policies is based on economic development arguments, little evidence exists as to their impact on overall job creation and local level effects. We assess the existence, distribution and duration of local level labor impacts of wind power investment using a panel of all 278 Portuguese mainland municipalities for the years 2001-2014. Our results show there are short term effects, mainly for low skilled labor, during the construction phase. We estimate a decrease of 0.37 percentage points in total unemployment rate for each 100MW installed. We find positive spatial spillovers for municipalities that are 30km or less away. We find no evidence of sustained effects or impact during the operations and maintenance phase. These insights highlight the need to couple incentive policies with labor market and educational reforms that reduce the mi...

2014

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2020

Wind power is an important source of renewable energy. Beyond the environmental dimension, the wind energy may contribute to the local development. Due to its weather conditions, Brazil emerges as one of the leading countries in the generation of wind power. This study estimates the impact of wind farms on the Brazilian labor market, through the exploration of the staggered nature of the sequential process of wind farm implantation between 2004 and 2016. We estimate the treatment effect parameters using a Difference--in--Differences (DiD) approach with: i) multiple time periods, ii) variation in treatment timing, and iii) dynamic treatment effects, through an event study design. We aggregate information from several data sources into a panel and we analyze the impact on employment and wages, by considering economic sectors, educational levels, and firm sizes. Our findings suggest that wind farms increase employment in the industry, agriculture and construction, and increase the wages in all economic sectors. Additionally, we find positive effects on the employment and wages of less--educated workers, and of small and medium--sized firms. The impact of this intervention can last for up to two years. Our results suggest that wind power may generate significant social impacts through the labor market, by contributing to local development and increasing social welfare in developing economies.

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2015

Any opinions expressed here are those of the author(s) and not those of IZA. Research published in this series may include views on policy, but the institute itself takes no institutional policy positions. The IZA research network is committed to the IZA Guiding Principles of Research Integrity. The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. IZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author.

2019

Renewable energy is a crucial element to mitigate the e ects of climate change, and wind power is an important resource because of its lower production cost and sustainability. Beyond the environmental dimension, the implementation of wind farms may impact local development. Due to the weather conditions, Brazil emerges as one of the leading countries in the generation of wind power. Thus, this paper aims we estimate the impacts of wind farms on the Brazilian local labor market, aggregating information from several data sources into a panel from 2002 and 2016. We analyze the impacts on the formal employment and wage levels, considering di erent sectors, educational level, and rm size. We explore the staggered process of expansion of wind farms among municipalities through the staggered Di erencein-Di erences (DiD) approach, and we apply the event-study framework to verify the e ects of duration and pre-intervention trends. The results suggest that wind farms increase the total level...

2014

Wind power creates jobs The European Wind Energy Association estimates that by 2020 there will be 520,000 jobs in the European wind energy sector and almost 800,000 jobs by 2030. Globally 834,000 people were employed in the wind industry at the end of 2013.-Read more in Chapter 6 and 11 Contents Chapter 1 Preface Chapter 2 Summary and recommendations Chapter 3 Synthesis Chapter 4 Global energy perspectives with an emphasis on wind energy Chapter 5 Danish and European plans for wind energy deployment Chapter 6 Wind energy technology developments Chapter 7 Offshore wind energy developments Chapter 8 Emerging wind energy technologies Chapter 9 Challenges and solutions for energy systems with high shares of wind energy Chapter 10 Wind resource assessment and wind power forecasting Chapter 11 Wind economics Chapter 12 Environmental and social impacts of wind energy Chapter 13 Recycling of wind turbines Chapter 14 Index Chapter 15 References

Reliable empirical data on the siting characteristics and operational performance of wind farms are scarce. Knowing more about the technical characteristics of wind farms provides insight into the business mindset of wind farm developers, which can be useful for policymakers or researchers who are intent on designing policy in a way to optimize wind farm investment by creating better alignment between the investment patterns sought by developers and government support designed to attract investment. This study draws on a unique dataset from 32 wind farms, 20 onshore and 12 in forested areas with a total of more than 2.5 GW installed wind capacity to explore development patterns. The paper examines four hypotheses related to characteristics of wind farms in emerging markets and investigating how project delays and progressive technological enhancements shape wind farm development. In this paper, we explain these results and conclude by extracting lessons from this analysis for creating wind power policy better aligned with developers' interests.

Wind power development has surged in recent years in the United States. Policymakers and economic development practitioners to date have typically relied upon project-level case studies or modeled input-output estimates to assess the economic development impacts from wind power, often focusing on potential local, state-wide, or national employment or earnings impacts. Building on this literature, we conduct an ex post econometric analysis of the county-level economic development impacts of wind power installations from 2000 through 2008 in a large, wind-rich region in the country. Taking into account factors influencing wind turbine location, we find an aggregate increase in county-level personal income and employment of approximately $11,000 and 0.5 jobs per megawatt of wind power capacity installed over the sample period of 2000 to 2008. These estimates appear broadly consistent with modeled input-output results, and translate to a median increase in total county personal income and employment of 0.2% and 0.4% for counties with installed wind power over the same period.

Policy Research Working Papers, 2009

The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.