A Policy Proposal for Green Jobs in India

Abstract

This paper presents a green energy policy proposal, which not only has a higher employment potential but also delivers higher growth to the economy because of the increased fiscal expenditure that this pro-gram entails. Our estimates show that for every million US dollars invested in the Indian economy annually, the total number of jobs generated through our green energy program will be 197 jobs compared to only 82 jobs in the fossil fuel program. To the best of our knowledge, for the first time in the literature, this study analyzed the composition of employment to reflect on the type and quality of jobs created through investments in the green energy program in India. The renewable energy sector and the energy e fficiency sector generates 216 and161 jobs respectively per million USD of investment. The bioenergy sector is the most labour-intensive sector. Within the energy effi ciency program, weatherization and building retrofits seem to be the most labour-intensive sectors. Regarding the composition of employment, the green energy program is more progressive than its fossil fuel counterpart, whether we look at it through the lens of gender, region, caste or skill. This study argues that in the long-run, building a green en-ergy economy in India, as opposed to expanding its existing fossil-fuel dominated energy system, will generate both significant opportunities and challenges in terms of the employment effects. The opportunities exist because there will be an overall net gain of employment in the economy with the expansion of the green energy program. The challenges, then, will be to encourage and support these workplaces to become increasingly organized and formalized such that this expanding workforce benefits from better quality jobs, higher and stable earnings, and other employment benefits like health insurance, pension and enhanced social security.