Brazil’s trending photovoltaic industry expected to give job market fresh impetus
Figures from IRENA 2016, the annual review of renewable energy and jobs, reveal that the number of people employed in the global renewable energy industry rose by 5% in 2015 to reach 8.1 million. The most important employers in this sector are involved in solar energy, which accounted for 2.8 million jobs in that same year. The countries with the highest employment numbers for the renewable energy sector were China, Brazil, and the United States. In Brazil, current estimates point to every megawatt of newly installed photovoltaic capacity either directly or indirectly creating between 20 and 30 jobs. As PV power plants expand in Brazil, there is every potential to create up to 90,000 new jobs.
Sao Paulo, June 15, 2016 – Although there was a slight downturn in global employment in renewables compared to previous years, the number of jobs worldwide continues to rise in the long term – a stark contrast to the depressed labor markets of the energy sector as a whole. Solar energy is the largest global employer in renewables with an estimated 2.8 million jobs worldwide (an increase of 11% versus 2014). The number of people working in solar energy-based water heating and cooling has dropped to around 940,000 due to shrinking markets in China, Brazil and the European Union. At 1.3 million, there was also a dip in people employed directly through large hydropower activity, primarily due to the lower number of new installations. Most jobs in this field are in operations and maintenance, with the biggest employers being China, Brazil and India.
At present, the Brazilian renewables sector mainly employs people in bioenergy and large hydropower activities, although jobs in the wind sector are also growing thanks to increased levels of deployment and local manufacturing. So solar PV is expected to be the field with the fastest expansion as local deployment increases and planned photovoltaic power plant capacity grows to 3.3 GW by 2018. On top of the 60,000 to 90,000 jobs this could create, local module production holds plenty of potential as the focus shifts away from installation. To draw a parallel, there were 100,000 solar jobs in Germany when the market hit 7 GW in 2012, so depending on developments in Brazil, solar energy holds major potential for Brazilian employment in the long term. Several firms have indicated interest in setting up solar PV manufacturing, so what is currently almost a miniature job market of just 4,000 people in Brazil could become a key part of the economy within decades, if not years.
