Expansion of the wind industry, both onshore and offshore, could create around 3.3m new jobs over the next five years, according to new analysis from the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC).
According to GWEC Market Intelligence, an additional 470 GW of new onshore and offshore wind capacity will be installed around the world between 2021-2025, generating sustainable and long-term jobs over the course of 25-year project lifetimes.
Many of these jobs will be locally based, such as for the construction and O&M phase of projects. The majority of these jobs will be created in high growth wind markets including China, US, India, Germany, UK, Brazil, France, Sweden, Spain, South Africa, and Taiwan.
The forecast for job creation is based on global studies by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) on job creation for onshore and offshore wind projects from 2017 and 2018, as well as market growth data from GWEC Market Intelligence.
With 751 GW of wind power capacity already installed, the wind industry has generated nearly 1.2m jobs globally to date according to IRENA. As of 2020, there were approximately 550,000 wind energy workers in China, 260,00 in Brazil, 115,000 in the US and 63,000 in India, according to a global survey by GWEC Market Intelligence.
Norwegian energy intelligence firm Rystad expects the offshore wind sector to employ around 868,000 full-time workers by the end of the decade, with capacity set to rise eight-fold and exceed 250 GW.
