Green jobs in the Spanish renewable energy sector: an input-output approach

Since the Paris Agreement, the transition to a low carbon economy has been at the heart of the debate of the European energy and climate policy. In this chapter, we use a socially extended multi-regional input-output model to quantify the employment impacts of this transition in Spain. We consider alternative installation cost vectors and analyse the job creation in green investments under different assumptions for two technologies: onshore wind and solar photovoltaic. Our results show that Spain could create between 6.13 and 12.75 jobs for every million euros invested in renewables, depending on the assumptions and scenarios considered. Most of the jobs created in Spain and the rest of the European Union would be direct, while the indirect effects would be stronger in the rest of the world. Finally, we observe that solar energy generates more jobs overall, but wind energy leads to more jobs in Spain (8.89 vs. 8.65, respectively).