Renewable energy investment and job creation; a cross-sectoral assessment for the Czech Republic with reference to EU benchmarks

Dvorák, Petr, Martinat, Stanislav ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4060-2009, der Horst, Dan Van, Frantál, Bohumil and Turecková, Kamila 2017. Renewable energy investment and job creation; a cross-sectoral assessment for the Czech Republic with reference to EU benchmarks. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 69 , pp. 360-368. 10.1016/j.rser.2016.11.158

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Abstract

The development of renewable energy sources has been primarily justified on the ground of environmental policies and energy security, but new jobs opportunities and establishment of new economy sectors may be equally important co-benefits from investments in this sector. The main goal of this paper is to assess the employment benefits of investments in renewable energy in the Czech Republic. We examine the level and rate of the development of the renewable energy sector in the Czech Republic in terms of ('green‘) job creation for the period 2008–2013, in comparison to data from other EU countries, including Germany as a leading early investor in renewables. Whilst the deployment of renewable energy in the Czech Republic has succeeded to create a significant number of jobs (more than 20 000 employees in 2010), our analysis illustrates a strong dependency of job creation on the continuation of financial incentives. We also find that biomass and waste energy processing offer the highest employment per MWh, which benefits employment in (economically fragile) rural areas. We discuss the question of competitiveness of a country that was not amongst the early adopters of renewables, arguing that the technical skills of the labour force in the Czech Republic provide a potential for more sustained investments in the sector.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Geography and Planning (GEOPL)
Publisher:	Elsevier
ISSN:	1364-0321
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	27 March 2018
Date of Acceptance:	12 November 2016
Last Modified:	24 Nov 2024 11:45
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/110279

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