Green Jobs and the Ethics of Energy - Ethical Engineering for International Development and Environmental Sustainability - page 150

its impact on all sectors of the economy. A key point is that, in a transition to renew-
ables, jobs would be lost in traditional energy sectors. So there is a need for a net job
estimate - the fi nal sum of positive and negative effects - as well as a comparison
with what would have happened anyway under a business as usual (BAU) approach.
The study compared a business as usual approach with an approach with stronger
RES support policies scenario, which would lead to a share of RES in fi nal energy
consumption of 20% by 2020 and 30% by 2030.
It found that improving current policies, so that the target of 20% RES in fi nal
energy consumption in 2020 could be achieved, would provide a net effect of up to
417,000 additional jobs, over and above those lost, rising to 545,000 by 2030. This
compared to 201,000 by 2020 and 300,000 by 2030 in the BAU case. Under the
BAU scenario, there was € 99bn in added value by 2020 (0.8% of total GNP), under

the RES scenario € 129,000bn (1.1% of total GNP), which it was claimed could be

raised to 197bn by 2030 under an accelerated renewables scenario with more opti-

mistic assumptions about exports. The extra added value in the renewables scenar-
ios is in part due to the fact that less fossil fuel had to be used.
This type of wider economic analysis has continued to gain attention in recent
years, given that fossil fuel prices have risen and look likely to continue to rise. In
addition nuclear costs have also risen. For example, in Germany, there has been
much attention paid to what is sometimes called the 'merit-order effect', i.e. the
tendency, given the feed-in tariff system, for the output from renewables like wind
to displace output from fossil sources, thus reducing costs to consumers. It is
claimed that the overall savings are greater than the feed-in tariff subsidy they pay
for wind (Sensfuß et al. 2007 ). The basic argument is that, if an investment portfolio
approach is adopted, renewables like wind, with zero fuel costs, may win out
(Awerbuch and Berger 2003 ).
A more recent comparative study by fi nancial group Ernst and Young (E&Y)
seems to confi rm this. By factoring in returns to GDP, like jobs and local taxes,
E&Y's analysis challenged the power sector's standard 'levelised cost of energy'
(LCOE) approach. E&Y claimed that the net cost of European wind power was up
to 50% lower than that of its main conventional power rival, combined-cycle gas-
fi red plants.
They noted that in Spain, producing 1 MWh will generate

€

€ 56 of gross added

value from wind, as opposed to 16 from CCGT. Across the six EU focus countries

(Spain, UK, France, Germany, Portugal and Poland), wind's net cost was competi-
tive and, extrapolated across the EU as whole, actually cheaper (Ernst and Young
2012 ).
Following a similar net cost approach, a major renewables company, Mainstream
Renewables, has pushed for recognition of the wider strategic benefi ts of offshore
wind, for example, in terms of security of supply and employment creation. They
noted that a 2012 UK study of the 'Value of Offshore Wind' had looked at the ben-
efi ts of investment in offshore wind. The study had found that, by 2015, it could
increase UK GDP by 0.2%.
It would also create over 45,000 full-time jobs. By 2020, it could increase GDP
by 0.4% and the number of people employed to over 97,000, and by 2030, it could

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