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Counting Green Jobs in China Harder than Creating Them
Washington, D.C.—China’s massive and fast-growing economy could create millions of new green jobs over the next eight years, according to a new report from the Worldwatch Institute. The study is the most thorough effort known to date to explore China’s green jobs potential. An analysis of China’s energy, transportation, and forestry sectors shows they could provide at least 4.5 million green jobs just in 2020, with millions more positions created in the coming years. Beyond the numbers, however, Worldwatch’s research revealed large problems in the current methodologies that exist in China to track and count job creation by sector. Worldwatch found inconsistent methodologies used by the Chinese national and regional governments, challenges tracking the many smaller businesses that likely have a significant impact on job creation, a lack of industry trade organizations to monitor employment growth, and difficulty in separating out “green” sub-sectors from larger, fast-growing industries. “Unlike in the United States, which has long had well-established tools and institutions to monitor employment growth, China’s means of tracking job creation by industry have a long way to grow,” said Worldwatch China Program Manager Haibing Ma. “Our report shows enormous potential for green job creation in China, but more importantly it shows a clear need to develop more robust and accurate tools for tracking employment trends. This capacity building is particularly important given China’s dominant role in the global green economy.” The report also identifies key lessons learned in China’s green development. In some cases, inefficient implementation has led to unintended economic or environmental costs. Roughly one-third of China’s installed wind capacity has difficulty connecting to the grid, causing millions of dollars of investment loss. In addition, the dominant focus on GDP growth among local governments may further challenge the central government’s ability to efficiently and effectively plan for green development. The report, Green Economy and Green Jobs in China: Current Status and Potentials for 2020, was co-authored by Ma together with Dr. Jiahua Pan and Dr. Ying Zhang, leading researchers from Worldwatch’s Beijing-based partner, the Institute for Urban and Environmental Studies (IUE) at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS).
Want a green job? Move to China
The "Clean Tech Job Trends 2010" report released in October by market research company Clean Edge reveals the top ten clean-tech employers in the world. With clean technology a rapidly growing area of investment for many cities around the world, alternative energy sectors such as solar power are becoming the next boom industries and an attractive area of employment. The report divided clean tech industries into four categories: Energy, which included solar and wind power; Transport, including electric vehicles; Water, including water recovery and capture; and Materials, which includes green building materials and green chemistry. Companies within these sectors were then ranked by their second quarter financial filings and annual reports. Using these criteria the report found that the majority of the top ten clean tech employers are based in China. Out of the top ten companies, five were based on the Chinese mainland and an additional company was based in Hong Kong. The remaining companies were divided between Europe and the United States.
One million new 'green jobs' could be created in China, the US and the EU by 2030
ROME (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Nearly one million new "green jobs" are expected to be created in China, the United States and the European Union by 2030 if the regions stick to their current pledges to curb global warming, scientists said on Tuesday. The three regions combined produce more than half the world's greenhouse gas emissions, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), so their policies are crucial for shaping a new global climate agreement to be finalised at a U.N. conference in Paris in December. The United States is due to submit its plans for slowing global warming to the United Nations this week, and the EU has already done so, but most governments including China will miss an informal March 31 deadline, complicating work on the deal. If the three regions managed to produce all their energy from renewable sources by 2050, more than 3 million jobs would be created and they would save around $520 billion a year in fossil fuel imports, according to a study by the NewClimate Institute, an environmental research group. "Governments formulating climate action plans should consider the significant benefits for their people that could be achieved by setting their ambition levels to maximum," study co-author Niklas Hoehne said. Reaching those ambitious targets, however, seems unlikely with a few exceptions. "Denmark wants to phase out fossil fuels entirely, Sweden is coming close, and Germany has a target of getting 80 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2050," Hoehne told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. The study only examined potential job benefits from creating new energy systems in wind, solar and hydro power. Potential employment in retrofitting old buildings to make them more energy-efficient was not included, meaning the total number of new jobs is likely to be higher, Hoehne said. Some jobs will be lost in petroleum-related industries, such as oil refining, he added, but these figures were not taken into account in the study. Europe alone, through its climate action plan, stands to save $33 billion annually on fossil fuel imports by 2030, if it meets its target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 40 percent from 1990 levels, Hoehne said. The United States plans to cut emissions by 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. China said in November it would aim to peak its CO2 emissions by around 2030 but would strive to achieve the target earlier. Scientists have warned that if global warming causes average temperatures to rise by more than two degrees, the world could enter a period of catastrophic climate change.
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1 Nearly one million new green jobs were created in 2013 to reach 6.5 million overall jobs, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency’s (IRENA) Renewable Energy and Jobs – Annual Review 2014.
2 The new report outlines several major trends: An ever-expanding amount of green jobs across the globe, a clear shift toward developing economies, the chilling impact policy uncertainty has on green growth, and a looming shortage of skilled workers in many renewable energy technologies.
3 In order, the largest concentrations of green jobs were in China, Brazil, America, India, and Germany, with other noteworthy employment numbers in Spain and Bangladesh.