The impacts of COVID-19 on clean energy labor markets: Evidence from multifaceted analysis of public health interventions and COVID-health factors

Chien-Fei Chen; Yuanyang Liu; Jamie Alexander Greig; Zhenglai Shen; Yunye Shi

doi:10.1016/j.enpol.2022.112880

The impacts of COVID-19 on clean energy labor markets: Evidence from multifaceted analysis of public health interventions and COVID-health factors

Energy Policy. 2022 May:164:112880. doi: 10.1016/j.enpol.2022.112880. Epub 2022 Mar 11.

Authors

Chien-Fei Chen¹, Yuanyang Liu², Jamie Alexander Greig³, Zhenglai Shen⁴, Yunye Shi⁵

Affiliations

¹ Center for Ultra-wide-area Resilient Electrical Energy Transmission Networks (CURENT), Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Tennessee, USA.
² Department of Business Analytics and Statistics, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, USA.
³ Agricultural Leadership, Education and Communications, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, USA.
⁴ Buildings and Transportation Science Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN, USA.
⁵ Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Tennessee, Chattanooga, USA.

Abstract

COVID-19 pandemic has affected clean energy labor market. Using real-time job vacancy data, this study analyzes the impacts of the pandemic on the U.S. clean energy labor market in 2020, including biomass, energy efficiency (EE), electric vehicle (EV), power/microgrid, solar, and wind industries. This study identifies how COVID-health factors and public health interventions influence clean energy job availability during the early COVID pandemic. Overall, California had the most energy jobs and experienced a significant decrease in April 2020. EV and solar had the highest percentages of job vacancies during the pandemic in general. Still, lockdowns had the most severe influence on EE and wind jobs. Stay-at-home orders negatively affected clean energy job vacancies in biomass, EV, power/microgrid, and wind. Social-gathering restrictions, however, did not have much influence. Increased COVID tests at the state level had the strongest and most positive influence on clean energy job postings, indicating the importance of a state's ability to manage public health infrastructure or crisis issues. COVID hospitalizations negatively influenced the job vacancies in biomass and wind but did not affect the other four sectors; conversely, as COVID death numbers increased, the number of jobs in biomass, EV, power grid, solar, and wind decreased, but not in EE jobs.

Keywords: COVID-19; Clean energy jobs; Energy efficiency; Green energy jobs; Public health interventions; Renewable energy.