There is neither enough qualification nor as much local employment as is thought. These are the two main concerns that the Bank of Spain has been conveying in its recent reports after assessing the prospects for job creation in the renewable energy sector. He does not go so far as to categorically question the large figures of the Central Government and agrees that the future is full of opportunities, but he does find questions that cool the enthusiasm about the new line 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 a year throughout the current decade. This 2023 the number should be 113,000 and rise progressively over the years, up to 135,000 at 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 like energy efficiency, the electric car or the expansion of electrical networks.
The Bank of Spain warns, in its latest annual report, that, despite the fact that the country has leading companies in renewables, “the training opportunities needed 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 LinkedIn report places Spain among the 25 countries with the most 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 of the Bank of Spain to make its own the employment data in renewables announced by the Spanish Government. Neither the INE nor the EPA nor the Ministry of Labor when they publish the unemployment figures each month break down this activity, since they take other categories as a reference. The Bank of Spain alludes to a figure from Eurostat 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 lower than thought. It partially contradicts the collective imagination, which places renewables as the solution to empty Spain and which has brought to the cinema, with Alcarràs or As Bestas, the clash of these technologies with the rural world.
The report, entitled Do renewables create local jobs? , uses multipliers to establish how much local employment is created per megawatt installed and also how much the unemployment rate is lowered. For every 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 insignificant effect on local employment in the construction and maintenance phase,” he says.
The problem is that neither solar nor wind power lowers the municipality’s unemployment rate by more than 1%, which makes the authors of the report think that companies are turning to workers from other places. One of the authors of this work is Natalia Fabra, professor at the Carlos III University of Madrid; his opinions are influential in the energy sector.
Photovoltaics, the Bank of Spain estimates, just 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 from renewables remain in the municipalities where the investment is made”, he concludes.
In the ball of figures on renewable employment in Spain, the international agency Irena estimates that in 2021 solar energy, which includes photovoltaic and thermosolar, employed 31,500 people, compared to 23,900 from wind. Meanwhile, the association of renewable companies Appa calculates that these technologies employed 111,409 people in the country that year.
What is true is that the goals are ambitious. The Pniec aspires to surpass 50,000 wind megawatts in 2030, compared to nearly 30,000 at present, and to reach almost 40,000 photovoltaics, twice as many as at present. The Spanish Government has had to put order in the face of the speculation unleashed around the points of connection to the electricity network of new installations.
