By Express News Service

NEW DELHI: More than 300,000 new workers can be employed in wind and solar jobs and more than 1 million total employment opportunities can be created in achieving India’s ambitious clean energy goals to install 175 gigawatts of renewable power by 2022, a study released today shows.

The labour-intensive rooftop solar segment will employ 70 percent of the new workforce, creating seven times more jobs than large-scale projects such as solar farms.

The study by the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) also finds that strong growth in the domestic solar manufacturing industry could provide full time employment for an additional 45,000 people in India.

The study calculates both the number of full-time jobs that will be created by the solar and wind sectors, as well as the number of workers that will be required to join the sectoral workforce by 2022.

The study estimates that India’s clean energy goals have the potential to put 34,600 people to work in wind power, 58,600 in utility solar and 238,000 in rooftop solar jobs over the next five years.

Solar jobs will be well distributed across India with Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh leading in job creation. Wind jobs, are likely to be concentrated in a few states that have high wind potential, as has been the case with wind capacity.

Neeraj Kuldeep, Programme Associate, CEEW, said, “80 per cent of the new clean energy workforce will be employed during the construction phase.

However, despite these being contractual jobs, the large pipeline of renewable energy projects creates enough opportunities for workers to stay employed.

Additionally, since most of these jobs are in the rooftop solar PV segment, central and state governments must provide greater policy support to the rooftop sector.”