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Decentralized renewables employment data shows its potential in helping achieve both United Nations Sustainable Development Goals 7 and 8.

Full Report–Powering Jobs Census 2022: The Energy Access Workforce.

• The Decentralized Renewable Energy (DRE) sector is a major source of stable employment with an estimated 374,000 jobs across Africa and 80,000 in India.
• Demand for skilled workers in the off-grid energy sector resumes upward trajectory after pandemic dip, and it is estimated will create up to half a million jobs by 2030 in Africa alone.
• The DRE sector is upskilling as it matures. According to survey respondents 71 percent of the jobs in India are skilled, 56 percent in Nigeria, and 43 percent in Kenya. Ethiopia, with a relatively underdeveloped DRE sector, has 25 percent skilled workers.
• Female representation in DRE jobs remains low due to cultural and social norms, preventing many women from entering and remaining in the DRE sector. However, the wage gap is smaller than national averages, with the exception of Ethiopia.

NEW YORK, Sept. 19, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — Power for All, the global campaign to end energy poverty, today released its second Decentralized Renewable Energy (DRE) jobs report; supported by GET.invest, Good Energies Foundation, and The Rockefeller Foundation. The industry’s most comprehensive emerging markets employment census shows increased demand for DRE solutions is creating hundreds of thousands of formal and informal jobs. The sector is becoming a major employment engine, especially in remote rural areas in emerging and developing economies where poverty and unemployment levels are high.  In addition it is helping achieve universal electricity access while supporting the world’s transition to clean energy.

In order to realize the full social and economic benefits of DRE, the report calls for concerted efforts from all stakeholders in the public, private, and non-profit sectors to ensure the necessary human capital is in place.

“With DRE recovering from the impact of the pandemic faster than the broader economy its promise is clear, however significant challenges remain,” said Kristina Skierka CEO, Power for All. “Energy regulations need to be overhauled to accommodate renewables and other energy innovations, foreign investment encouraged, and structural issues like access to foreign capital and licensing restrictions resolved in order to grow DRE jobs and realize the sector’s full potential.”

According to the report, the DRE sector is a significant contributor to job creation in energy poor countries with the potential to create direct employment for up to half a million people in Africa by 2030. The sector showed great resilience in the face of COVID-19 with jobs returning in 2021 and now surpassing pre-pandemic levels in most of the study countries.

DRE–which includes pico-solar, appliances, solar home systems (SHS), commercial and industrial (C&I) standalone systems, and mini-grids–has an important role to play in accelerating United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 7 (universal access to clean reliable and affordable energy) especially in remote rural communities, and efforts towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The sector has also been a source of ‘productive’ and ‘decent’ employment, especially in emerging economies where employment is a major focus of United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 8 (inclusive and sustainable economic growth, employment and decent work for all). The rapid recovery of jobs following the pandemic proves the sector’s resilience, indicating those jobs are likely immune to the worst recessionary pressures.

Photo courtesy of Free-Photos.