Green Jobs and the Ethics of Energy - Ethical Engineering for International Development and Environmental Sustainability - page 149

although only for perhaps a short period, episodically, unless the programme is con-
tinued. By contrast, major capital projects take much longer to get going, and may
take a long time to complete. Economists use 'job-year' fi gures to refl ect this dura-
tion issue, and, certainly, in terms of job security, longer-term employment is desir-
able. But the quantity versus quality issue is harder to deal with. The differences in
job type/pay/quality opens up wide social issues - what type of jobs do we want?
To summarise, on this essentially 'monetarist' view, it can be argued that the
number of jobs (direct, indirect and induced) ultimately created in the economy will
depend basically on the cost of the project (i.e. the capital injected and the opera-
tional costs), but the timing, location, duration and type of the direct jobs, including
pay levels, will vary depending on the technology. That will also have a knock-on
effect on the indirect and induced jobs. However, it can also be argued that, as
Maynard Keynes famously put it, in the end, we are all dead! It may be that some of
the injected or operational money will go through the economy creating more or
less well-paid or larger numbers of jobs, but as the money passes through into indi-
rect and induced jobs, the net quantitative jobs effect may end up being the same or
similar. It is not for nothing that some call economics the dismal science! Certainly,
given the complexity of economic interactions, seeking to identify job impacts from
investment in green energy programmes, so as to guide energy and employment
policies, is hard. Indeed a recent critical study of Low Carbon Jobs concluded that
'the proper domain for the debate about the long-term role of renewable energy and
energy effi ciency is the wider framework of energy and environmental policy, not a
narrow analysis of green job impacts'. (UKERC 2014 )

6 Employment Estimates

Despite the methodological diffi culties, economists do produce estimates of
employment creation for various investments. For example, an EU-wide study
'EmployRES - The impact of renewable energy policy on economic growth and
employment in the European Union' was conducted on behalf of the European
Commission's Directorate-General Energy and Transport in 2009 (EmployRES
2009 ). It claimed that policies that support renewable energy sources (RES) could
give a signifi cant boost to the economy and the number of jobs in the EU.
The study was based on an input-output model (MULTIREG) that was used to
assess the effect of developments in the RES sector on other economic sectors. With
regard to future developments, the analysis employed a RES sector bottom-up model
(GREEN-X) that was designed to simulate the effect of RES support policies to 2030.
It noted that in 2005 the RES sector employed 1.4 million people and generated
Euro 58 billion value added. The total gross value added generated by the RES
industry reached Euro 58 billion in 2005, equal to 0.58% of EU gross domestic
product (GDP). About 55% of value added and employment occurred directly in the
RES sector and 45% in other sectors due to the purchase of goods and services.
For the future, the EmployRES study assessed the economic effects of support-