At
Clean Technica:
Nearly one million new green jobs were created in 2013 to reach 6.5 million overall jobs, according to theInternational Renewable Energy Agency’s (IRENA) Renewable Energy and Jobs—Annual Review 2014.
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. [...]
IRENA estimates 800,000 new green jobs were created in 2013, boosting the overall number of workers employed in the clean energy economy from 5.7 million in 2012 to 6.5 million at the end of 2013.
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. IRENA cites these rankings as evidence of a regional clean energy economic shift away from the traditional leaders in developed nations toward emerging markets where energy poverty and growing demand must be addressed by policymakers.
Green jobs by country.
There are, however, some clouds. Spain lost 23,000 green jobs because of policy changes that came with the 2008 economic recession. Germany, where success in manufacturing and installing renewables has led to issues with the reliability of the electrical grid and higher energy prices, jobs in the solar industry were halved between 2011 and 2013. Jobs in solar manufacturing in 2013 were a third what they had been in 2012.
In the United States, one of the problems is the renewables production tax credit that has provided a subsidy for electricity generated by solar, wind and geothermal projects. The PTC, first passed in 1992, has expired and been renewed five times. It most recently expired last December. The tax credit is an excellent approach to expand renewable projects, but the uncertainty associated with the expiration-renewal pattern makes it harder to attract investors for some renewable projects.