Guest “Rhetorical question” by David Middleton
If you can’t see why this is hilarious, you probably flunked economics (and basic arithmetic)…
Wind and solar now employ as many workers as the oil sector.
The LinkedIn post is accompanied by a cute YouTube video:
The World Economic Forum, apparently thinks that this is something to brag about. If you can’t see why this is hilarious, you probably flunked economics (and basic arithmetic)…
GENEVA (ILO News) – Worldwide employment in renewable energy reached 12.7 million last year, a jump of 700,000 new jobs in one year, despite the lingering effects of COVID-19 and the growing energy crisis, according to a new report.
Renewable Energy and Jobs: Annual Review 2022 identifies domestic market size as a major factor influencing employment generation in renewables, along with labour and other costs. Solar energy was found to be the fastest-growing sector. In 2021 it provided 4.3 million jobs, more than a third of the current global workforce in renewable energy.
[…]
Oil and gas production
The ILO estimates that nearly 6 million people are directly employed by the petroleum industry and over ten times that number of jobs are indirectly created by the industry. Employment opportunities for women in the petroleum industry are increasing, but from a very low base. This may be because of harsh working conditions in the industry: long hours work, especially in oil production; increasing amounts of work round the clock, in difficult, remote areas ; scheduling of shifts particularly offshore when rotation patterns are constrained by transport schedules and limits on accommodation. The petroleum industry faces the shortage of skilled workers.
Renewables require 300,000 more employees per exajoule of output than the oil & gas industry does. Whenever I see these “triumphant” articles about renewable energy employing more people than fossil fuels, I’m always reminded of the photos of dozens of workers sweeping snow off the streets of Beijing during President Nixon’s historic visit to Red China in 1972.
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By the logic of the World Economic Forum, it is a “good thing” that it takes more people to produce and deliver 7% of the world’s primary energy needs, than it takes to produce and deliver 55% (oil & gas).
It’s actually possible that, in 2021, it took twice as many people to deliver than 40 EJ of “green” energy than it took to deliver 330 EJ of “oil sector” energy.
Renewable energy jobs hit 12.7 million globallyNew report confirms growth in renewable jobs despite multiple crises and calls for targeted industrial strategies to create stable supply chains and decent jobs.
Press release