The 11th edition of the publication series “Renewable Energy and Jobs” by the International Renewable Energy Agency, or IRENA for short, has been available for a few days. The Annual Review 2024 shows a new record of 16.2 million people employed in the renewable energy sector worldwide. Overall, employment rose sharply by a further 2.5 million within a year (previous year's figure: 13.7 million).

The reason is easy to see. The photovoltaic industry is booming and employed 7.11 million people in 2023, 2.21 million more than in 2022. The bioenergy technology sector also saw a slight increase, with around 300,000 more employees. This is mainly due to the liquid biofuels sector, which will employ a total of 2.8 million people in 2023. The biomass and biogas sectors will employ 756,000 and 316,000 people respectively.

The hydropower sector lost around 200,000 jobs in 2023. There were no changes in the wind energy and solar (cooling and heating) technology sectors. Around 1.46 million people are employed in the wind energy sector worldwide, and around 700,000 in the solar (heating/cooling) sector.

In the booming photovoltaic industry, almost 4.6 million people (65%) are employed in the Chinese labor market, followed by India with just over 300,000 employees.

China also leads the TOP 10 country ranking in the field of wind energy, with 51% of employees. Not so in the field of liquid biofuels. Here, Brazil leads the ranking with around 1 million employees. Followed by Indonesia with around 800,000 employees.

Nevertheless, as our graphic shows, China dominates the renewable energy sector with a total of 7.4 million employees, followed, but clearly distanced, by the EU27 countries with 1.8 million, Brazil with a total of 1.56 million and the USA and India with around 1 million employees each.

In 2013, the global renewable energy sector employed around 8.5 million people. In 2023, 10 years later, the figure will be almost twice as high, at 16.2 million.

In contrast, the production value of 473 gigawatts of newly installed electrical capacity in 2023 and a cumulative total capacity of 3865 gigawatts. In 2013, the cumulative total capacity was still around 1600 GW. The technology areas of wind energy and solar photovoltaics were responsible for the rapid increase. The hydropower sector has provided a baseline of around 1000 to 1300 GW since IRENA began its evaluations (2010).

China's increasingly dominant role in the field of renewable energies is also reflected in the global comparison of investment volume. Between 2014 and 2023, China alone invested USD 1572 billion, around three times as much as the United States (USD 550 billion) and around twice as much as the European countries, which invested around USD 785 billion.