Do Renewable Energy Investments Create Local Jobs?

Natalia Fabra, Gutiérrez, Eduardo, Aitor Lacuesta and Roberto Ramos
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Eduardo Gutiérrez Chacón

No 17206, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: Globally, renewable energy deployment often faces opposition from local communities. Why do residents oppose those investments despite the expectation that the investments will create new jobs? Exploiting the monthly variation in the timing and size of the renewable investments across more than 3,900 Spanish municipalities from 2017 to 2021, we find that the new jobs do not always remain in the municipalities where the plants are built. We find stronger employment and unemployment multipliers for solar than wind projects, reflecting differences in the tasks and skills involved. Beyond the labor market impacts, residents benefit from the investments through greater public spending and increased per capita income. However, these effects are modest, particularly in the case of small to medium-sized plants.

Keywords: Renewable energy; Employment; Unemployment; Nimby; Spatial effects (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C33 L94 O25 R23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-04
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP17206 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Do renewable energy investments create local jobs? (2024)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:17206

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP17206

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CEPR ().