Promoting Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency in Africa: A Framework to Evaluate Employment Generation and Cost-effectiveness

Nicola Cantore (), Patrick Nussbaumer, Max Wei and Daniel Kammen
Additional contact information
Patrick Nussbaumer: UNIDO
Max Wei: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Daniel Kammen: Energy and Resources Group, University of California and Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California

No 2016.45, Working Papers from Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei

Abstract: The ongoing debate over the cost-effectiveness of renewable energy (RE) and energy efficiency (EE) deployment often hinges on the current cost of incumbent fossil-fuel technologies versus the long-term benefit of clean energy alternatives. This debate is often focused on mature or ‘industrialized’ economies and externalities such as job creation. In many ways, however, the situation in developing economies is at least as or even more interesting due to the generally faster current rate of economic growth and of infrastructure deployment. On the one hand, RE and EE could help decarbonize economies in developing countries, but on the other hand, higher upfront costs of RE and EE could hamper short-term growth. The methodology developed in this paper confirms the existence of this trade-off for some scenarios, yet at the same time provides considerable evidence about the positive impact of EE and RE from a job creation and employment perspective. By extending and adopting a methodology for Africa designed to calculate employment from electricity generation in the U.S., this study finds that energy savings and the conversion of the electricity supply mix to renewable energy generates employment compared to a reference scenario. It also concludes that the costs per additional job created tend to decrease with increasing levels of both EE adoption and RE shares.

Keywords: Renewable Energy; Employment; Energy Efficiency; Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N77 O13 Q40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://feem-media.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/w ... oads/NDL2016-045.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Promoting Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency in Africa: A Framework to Evaluate Employment Generation and Cost-effectiveness (2016)
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:fem:femwpa:2016.45

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Alberto Prina Cerai ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).