India's decentralised renewables workforce to double by 2022-23: Report

This comes at a time when India is facing a 45-year high unemployment rate.

Business Standard : India’s decentralised renewable energy (DRE) sector--which generates, stores and distributes renewable energy locally--could employ nearly 100,000 more people by 2022-23, according to a new report.

While most of these jobs are expected to be long-term, women constitute only a quarter of the workforce in this sector. With this addition, the DRE sector’s workforce could double in size--from about 95,000 jobs in 2017-18 to 190,000 jobs by 2022-23--if the mini-grid market “continues to expand at a rapid pace”.

The number of informal jobs in the DRE sector is expected to remain stable at around 210,000, noted the first Powering Jobs Census 2019: The Energy Access Workforce report by Power For All, a coalition campaigning to scale DRE, released on July 15, 2019.

This comes at a time when India is facing a 45-year high unemployment rate, according to the Periodic Labour Force Survey released by the National Sample Survey Office in May 2019. Of nearly 61 million jobs created in India over 22 years post-liberalisation of the economy in 1991, 92% were informal jobs, according to an IndiaSpend analysis.

The report captures DRE employment data for 2017-18 to establish a baseline that explores the link between Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 7 (access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all) and SDG 8 (inclusive and sustainable economic growth, employment, and decent work for all).

The report covers India, Kenya and Nigeria: The DRE sector is estimated to add more than 260,000 direct, formal jobs in these countries by 2022-23. In India, 36 companies in the sector were surveyed.

Renewable appliance firms are the “job engine”

End-user product providers--that is, companies that sell pico solar appliances (that use small amount of power for gadgets such as calculators, cameras and mobile phones), solar home systems, and other small, off-grid appliances directly to customers--are the “job engine of the sector”, the report said, adding that they are expected to add 86,000 direct, formal jobs nationwide by 2022-23.

These companies alone accounted for 97% of 95,000 DRE jobs created in 2017-18. In addition, they added 470,000 “productive-use jobs”--created by the DRE end users as a result of newly-acquired or enhanced electricity access--in the same year.