Renewable energies save money and create jobs

Great potential to create and safeguard jobs

Renewables offer great potential to create and safeguard jobs. WWF's Biomass Study identifies an employment potential of 170,000 to 290,000 full-time jobs in the OECD countries from this renewable energy source alone. These jobs would occur mainly in rural, structurally weak regions and are therefore extremely important.

The European Commission (EC) also anticipates that a renewable energy supply would have positive impacts on employment. The EC set out a Community Strategy and Action Plan for renewables in its White Paper Energy for the Future: Renewable Sources of Energy (PDF: 200 KB). The adoption of the 2001 European Directive on the promotion of electricity produced from renewable energy sources means European Union (EU) members must double the share of electricity produced from renewable energy sources to 22.1% by 2010.  The EC believes this could create an estimated 500,000 new jobs.

Let's talk about money

At present, renewables cannot yet compete with conventional energy carriers on the open market - at least if subsidies and external costs (e.g. environmental damage) are taken out of the equation. In the short term, renewables therefore continue to require financial support from governments.

This support should be easy to justify politically given the considerable benefits renewables offer. Especially when one takes into consideration the US$250bn annual subsidies for fossil fuels.

Cost here turns into opportunity as the costs of renewables are falling while those of fossil energy carriers are rising. The price differential between fossil and renewable energy sources continues to narrow. In the long term, the costs of renewable systems will become lower than the costs of a fossil energy supply system, especially because the renewable ‘fuel’ is for free.

To promote the market launch of these technologies, governments need to set up an appropriate funding strategy. This will help to overcome initial high costs of research, development and first installations.

Examples in Europe and Asia

Such a funding strategy should safeguard the economic viability of investments in renewable technologies and, at the same time, create downward pressure on costs.

In September 2001, the EU adopted the Directive for the Promotion of Electricity from Renewable Energy Sources, also known as the Renewables Directive, as its first legal measure to reduce greenhouse gases under the Kyoto Protocol.

This European law aims to boost green power in the Union by setting minimum national targets for renewables by 2010 - 12.5% in gross energy consumption and 22.1% in electricity produced - and by mandating governments to address the financial and bureaucratic obstacles hindering renewable energy development.

In China, the government has decreed a new target for renewable energy to reach an ambitious 15% of the Chinese energy mix by 2020.

In the Philippines, NGOs and businesses, with strong involvement of WWF, have been lobbying for years for a proper law on renewable energy which would put renewables on equal footing with conventional energy sources such as coal. WWF is hopeful that the law will finally be signed into force shortly.