There is not enough qualification nor is as much local employment generated as is thought. These are the two main concerns that the Bank of Spain has been slipping in its recent reports when assessing the prospects for job creation in the renewable energy sector. He does not go so far as to categorically question the great figures of the Government and agrees that the future is full of opportunities, but he does find questions that cool the enthusiasm about the new vein of employment.
The National Integrated Energy and Climate Plan (PNIEC) sent by the Government to Brussels estimates that investments in renewables will generate between 107,000 and 135,000 jobs per year throughout this decade. This 2023, the figure should be 113,000 and rise progressively over the years, up to 135,000 by the end of 2030. It is only part of the potential of the new green economy, because a similar number of jobs should be created in areas such as energy efficiency, the electric car or the extension of the electrical networks.
The Bank of Spain warns in its latest annual report that, despite having the country’s leading companies in renewables, “the training opportunities necessary to fill the new green vacancies are not growing fast enough, which could end up limiting the speed and , even raising the cost of the energy transformation process”. An international report by LinkedIn places Spain among the 25 countries with the highest green skills, but warns that in twelve areas of activity the country is below the global average.
This first warning coincides with a certain resistance from the Bank of Spain to endorse the renewable employment data announced by the Government. Neither the INE in the EPA nor the Ministry of Labor, when publishing the unemployment figures each month, break down this activity, taking other categories as a reference. The Bank of Spain refers to a Eurostat figure that places 52,000 jobs in wind, solar and other green technologies at the end of 2021. It is much lower than that of the PNIEC.
Another recent report from the institution concludes that the local impact of green technologies is less than what is thought. It partly contradicts the collective imagination, which places renewables as the solution to an empty Spain and which has led to the cinema, through Alcarràs or As Bestas, the clash of these technologies with the rural world.
The report, titled Do renewables create local jobs? , uses some multipliers to establish how much local employment is created per megawatt installed and, also, how much the unemployment rate is lowered. For each solar megawatt, 2.5 jobs are created in the municipality during construction and 1.5 in maintenance. “In contrast, wind investments have a very low and statistically significant effect on local employment in the construction and maintenance phase,” he says.
The problem is that neither the solar nor the wind reduce the unemployment rate of the municipality by more than 1%, which makes the authors of the report think that the companies resort to workers from other places. One of the authors of this work is Natalia Fabra, a professor at the Carlos III University of Madrid, whose opinions are influential in the energy sector.
Photovoltaics, estimates the Bank of Spain, barely creates 3,657 jobs on average per year in all the Spanish municipalities where it is installed, including the installation phase. “There are two options: either the national figures are overestimated or only a small fraction of the positive effects on employment of renewables stays in the municipalities where the investment is made”, he concludes.
In the dance of figures on renewable employment in Spain, the international agency Irena estimates that in 2021 solar energy, which includes photovoltaic and solar thermal, employed 31,500 people, compared to 23,900 for wind power. Meanwhile, the association of renewable companies Appa calculates that these technologies gave employment to 111,409 people in the country that year.
What is certain is that the objectives are ambitious. The PNIEC aspires to exceed 50,000 wind megawatts in 2030, compared to around 30,000 at present, and reach almost 40,000 photovoltaic, twice as many as today. The Government has had to bring order to the speculation unleashed around the points of connection to the electrical network of new facilities.
