Sustainability
& green job creation

One of the critical issues at the Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development is how to move toward more sustainable energy sources while at the same time creating “green jobs” to lessen the severe unemployment problems in developing countries. Indeed, a Rio+20 briefing document on green jobs cites statistics indicating that the number of green jobs in the world could increase from 2.3 million to 20 million by 2030 if the proper steps are taken.

To that end, researchers with IIASA’s Risk, Policy and Vulnerability (RPV) Program have analyzed job creation pathways linked to the large-scale concentrated solar power (CSP) development being planned for North Africa. The region suffers from high unemployment with one of the highest unemployment rates in the world among young people and women, with only 45.3% of the population of “active age” being employed. For those who are employed, 42% are working poor, earning less than US$2 per day.

North Africa is already home to three CSP plants that are in operation or under construction, and plans call for much larger plants in Morocco (500 MW), Algeria (240 MW) Egypt (110 MW) and Tunisia (50 MW). Much of the electricity generated by these plants would go to Europe through high voltage transmission lines.

Research by IIASA’s Nadejda Komendantova and Anthony Patt found that if development, technology transfer, and construction of the plants involve not only local workers, but local development, manufacturing, and supply chains, then as many as 125,000 direct job-years could be created by the CSP projects if 20 GW of solar capacity are deployed. That number, compared to only 40,000 job years if much of the development and manufacturing is done outside of the region, is a key issue in creating sustainable green jobs in developing countries.

“We find that horizontal technology transfer, when more than half of all components are manufactured locally, would bring three times more job-years to North Africa than vertical technology transfer, and that the greatest number of jobs are induced in the service industries,” the researchers wrote in their analysis.

Vertical transfer typically involves construction of turn-key power stations, with all necessary technology and components being manufactured abroad and imported to host countries, while the ownership remains in foreign hands. To minimize the risk of losing intellectual property, the researchers wrote, management and technical staff are nationals of developed countries while cheap local labor does the construction work. Even when the ownership of the power plant is mixed or is further transferred to local government or private companies, the turn-key approach involves only limited transfer of knowledge or skills to local manufacturers.

In contrast, horizontal technology transfer is a joint venture between a foreign and local company and includes technical and business training, as well as establishing local industries for manufacturing of components. The venture is a more lengthy process, the researchers noted, “but it allows embedding of technology within [a] local population and economy, which can eventually allow local partners to fund, manufacture, operate, and maintain the new technologies themselves.”

The conclusions of the study showed, in the case of the CSP projects, the clear benefits of horizontal transfer in creating green jobs, especially if 15% of Europe’s electricity demand is covered by imported electricity from North Africa, which translates to 700 Twh/y. If 40% of component manufacturing were local, then total direct and indirect job-years would be 430,000 and the induced employment would generate more than two million job-years. If the horizontal transfer were 100% in terms of local manufacturing, then six million job-years in induced employment would result.

Over 20 years, this would lead to annual employment of between 100,000 and 300,000 people, while under vertical technology transfer, fewer than 100,000 job-years would be created.

Concern over green jobs is not limited to the RPV Program at IIASA. Scientists in the Ecosystems Services and Management (ESM) Program noted the importance of linking green jobs to bioenergy in a paper presented in the Proceedings of the International Conference of the International Boreal Forest Research Association (IBFRA 2011), in Krasnoyarsk, Russia. The paper found that enhancing bioenergy production in the European part of Russia could create green jobs. To install an additional 2,219 MW of bioenergy production, about 4,500 workers would be needed during construction and about 2,000 people would be employed permanently in the biomass supply and processing sector. Another 500 long-term jobs would be created in the resulting new power plants.

Although green jobs alone are not an answer to the UN’s global employment challenge to create some 63 million new jobs by 2050, coordinated global action and investments of about US$1.8 trillion might lead to 13 million new green jobs by mid-century, according to the UN.

Last edited: 17 October 2012