VII. SECONDARY EFFECTS EMPLOYMENT A 2014 survey from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) found that solar plants the size of those proposed in Rajasthan (about 1 MW) generated the following direct employment: 147 Table 6: Solar Plant Job and Employment Creation
Short-Term Phase Business Development (Skilled) Design/Pre-Const. (Skilled) Const./Commissioning (Skilled) Const./Commissioning (Unskilled) Long-Term Phase Operations/Maint. (Skilled) Operations/Maint. (Unskilled)
A: Median Jobs Required
B: Median Duration/Job
C: Med. Person Days/MW
D: Median FTE/MW
5
75 days
99
0.38
7
90 days
142
0.55
20
120 days
980
3.77
50
100 days
2,200
8.46
E: Median Employees/Yr.
F: Median FTE/MW/Yr.
3
1.20
7
2.31
To determine actual solar job market numbers, NRDC and the Council on Energy, Environment, and Water (CEEW) developed a questionnaire for solar PV power plants. (Source: NRDC 2014).
These results suggest that for every megawatt of solar capacity installed, 82 jobs (Column A) equal to about thirteen full-time positions (Column D) will be needed for Business Development, Design and Pre-Construction, and Construction and Commissioning. Further, ten jobs (Column E) equal to about 3.5 permanent, full-time positions (Column F) will be needed for Operations and Maintenance every year post-installation. As Rajasthan has plans to install 4 GW of distributed power by 2025, one should expect 52,000 short-term FTE jobs (which would all disappear after 2025) and 14,000 permanent FTE jobs/year thereafter if targets are met. About 80,000 short-term FTE jobs and 21,500 permanent FTE jobs/year would be expected in a full penetration scenario of 6,121 MW. Most permanent jobs would be unskilled (groundskeepers, line tenders, etc.), offering gainful employment opportunities to women and youth who would otherwise be excluded from the labor force.148 Because farmers are the owner-operators of their own solar pumps, the solar pump model should not generate the same level of employment as the solar feeder model, which would demand more in terms of engineering, construction, and long-term operations. 47
