Renewable Energy: Employment

(asked on 23rd January 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what assessment she has made of the implications for her policies of the findings published by the ONS on 16 January 2020 that the number of (a) people employed in the low carbon and renewable energy economy and (b) businesses in that sector have declined since 2014; and what the implications of those findings are for her policy on the UK reaching net zero emissions by 2050.


Answered by
Kwasi Kwarteng Portrait
Kwasi Kwarteng
This question was answered on 28th January 2020

It is misleading to compare estimates from the Low Carbon and Renewable Energy Economy Survey from 2014 with this year’s survey because of changes in the sample methodology and size between 2014 and 2015.

There are now over 460,000 people working in low carbon businesses and their supply chains across the country, up from the revised 2017 estimate of 447,000. Turnover in the direct low carbon economy was estimated at £46.7 billion in 2018, up from £40.4 billion in 2015.

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