11.8.2 Impacts of GHG mitigation on employment
A number of studies point out that investments in greenhouse gas mitigation could have a greater impact on employment than investments in conventional technologies. The net impact on employment in Europe in the manufacturing and construction industries of a 1% annual improvement in energy efficiency has been shown to induce a positive effect on total employment (Jeeninga et al., 1999). The effect has been shown to be substantially positive, even after taking into account all direct and indirect macro-economic factors such as the reduced consumption of energy, impact on energy prices, reduced VAT, etc. (European Commission, 2003) The strongest effects are seen in the area of semi-skilled labour in the building trades, which also accounts for the strongest regional policy effects. Furthermore, the European Commission (2005) estimates that a 20% saving on present energy consumption in the European Union by 2020 has the potential to create, directly or indirectly, up to one million new jobs in Europe.
Meyer and Lutz (2002) use the COMPASS model to study the carbon taxes for the G7 countries. They find that recycling revenues via social security contributions increases employment by nearly 1% by 2010 in France and Germany, but much less in US and Japan. Bach et al. (2002), using the models PANTHA RHEI and LEAN, find that the modest ecological tax reform enacted in Germany in 1999–2003 increased employment by 0.1 to 0.6% by 2010. This is as much as 250,000 additional jobs. There is also a 2–2.5% reduction in CO2 emissions and a negligible effect on GDP. The labour intensity of renewable energy sources has been estimated to be approximately 10 times higher in Poland than that of traditional coal power (0.1–0.9 jobs/GWh compared to 0.01–0.1 jobs/GWh). Given this assumption, government targets for renewable energy would create 30,000 new jobs by 2010 (Jeeninga et al., 1999).
In a study of climate policies for California, Hanemann et al. (2006) report small increases in employment for a package of measures focusing on the tightening of regulations affecting emissions.