Clean energy industry increases in MassachusettsDate: 1/2/2019 BOSTON – Western Massachusetts is benefiting from advances in the clean energy industry, according to a report issued last week.
The Massachusetts Clean Energy Center (MassCEC) report noted that in the four western counties employment in the industry jumped from 12,335 in 2016 to 13,266 in 2018. The number of businesses increased from 1,014 to 1,071 in the same time period.
According to the report, the clean energy industry’s growth contributed to Massachusetts’ Gross State Product (GSP), increasing 15 percent between 2017 and 2018 to contribute more than $13.8 billion to the statewide economy, making up about 2.5 percent of the GSP.
“The clean energy industry continues to create quality jobs across Massachusetts,” said MassCEC CEO Stephen Pike. “With over 110,000 workers across the Commonwealth in a variety of occupations, including installation, efficiency, demand management and manufacturing, clean energy represents a significant segment of the Massachusetts workforce.”
The report noted:
• Massachusetts has over 110,700 clean energy workers, which amounts to about 3.1 percent of the state’s workforce. Based on the last data collection, over 1,500 clean energy jobs were created between 2017 and 2018. Since 2010, the clean energy workforce has grown by almost 84 percent, the equivalent to about 50,500 jobs. Most of the job creation occurred within the energy efficiency, demand management, and clean heating and cooling sectors, although alternative transportation employment increased by nearly 20 percent between 2017 and 2018. Nearly all alternative transportation employment growth occurred within the electric vehicles sub-sector
• The installation value chain grew by 418 jobs (1.4 percent) between 2017 and 2018. During this same time frame, engineering & research was the fastest growing component of the value chain, adding more than 2,400 jobs (12.7 percent increase). sales and distribution, the second largest segment of the value chain, declined by about 4 percent.
• alternative transportation employment increased by nearly 20 percent over the last year. The number of electric vehicles sold in Massachusetts increased by more than 52 percent. A variety of metrics suggest that alternative transportation is an increasingly important cluster of technologies in Massachusetts.
• The solar industry shed nearly 1,000 jobs between 2017–2018, but Massachusetts remains the state with the second most solar employees. This decrease is part of a national trend of decline in solar employment. Across the United States, solar employment decreased by 3.8 percent between 2016 and 2017. Further analysis revealed that while overall installed capacity had increased in preceding years, the number of smaller solar installations decreased by nearly half between 2015 and 2017. This means that an increasing amount of installed capacity is from larger projects. Larger projects require fewer installation hours per unit of capacity than smaller projects. Under these conditions of market demand, demand for employees declined while installed capacity still increased.
In a statement, Governor Charlie Baker said, “Massachusetts’ clean energy industry is a critical sector for the Commonwealth’s nation-leading, leading innovation economy and we are pleased to see continued job growth in this year’s report. We are proud of our standing as the most energy efficient state in the country and a leader in the emerging offshore wind industry, and look forward to continuing our work to secure a reliable, diverse and affordable energy portfolio for the Commonwealth.”
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