Renewable Energy Investments and Unemployment Problem

Renewable energy is important to reduce the global climate threat, ensuring energy security, and minimizing environmental risks. Although the renewable energy sector has entered a rapid development process in recent years, many countries still depend on traditional energy sources. Environmental degradation caused by the intensive use of traditional energy sources creates serious employment losses on a global scale. Policy makers turn to renewable energy investments in the face of both the negative effects of environmental degradation and employment losses shows the existence of the potential to eliminate these externalities in the long term. In the study, which deals with the effects of developments in the renewable energy sector on employment, it is evaluated how employment conditions evolve depending on the increase in renewable energy investments in the short, medium, and long term. The direct, indirect, and induced effects of renewable energy investments on employment show different employment balances in the short, medium, and long term. In this study, in which renewable energy sources are presented, renewable energy investments and employment relations are evaluated, it has been concluded that the precondition for the continuity of employment depends on the adaptation of human capital to the development in the renewable energy sector and the production of policies suitable for this development in a way that covers the entire society.