Making Jobs out of the Energy Transition: Evidence from the French Energy Efficiency Obligations Programme | Guillaume Wald

Vast amounts are being invested in the energy transition worldwide, with optimistic expectations of economic growth and green job creation. Yet, we crucially lack ex-post validations of the multiplier effects widely used to quantify new green jobs. Focusing on the French Energy Efficiency Obligations scheme, this paper provides the first ex-post estimate of the employment effect of a large energy-retrofit investment program. We exploit a discontinuity in the provision of subsidies and use a novel synthetic control method on disaggregated data to estimate regional-level employment effects. We estimate that the scheme created 1.5 jobs per million euros invested, mostly in a permanent position within micro enterprises. Hourly wages remained unaffected, suggesting that additional investments are captured by higher margins.

Thank you for this great opportunity! I’ll also include a slide about my on-going project on skills in the energy transition.

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