THE IMPACT OF THE EU CLIMATE POLICY ON GREEN JOBS CREATION

Abstract

The term ‘green jobs’ can be referred to the employment in a narrowly defined set of industries (for example: energy, construction, transport, etc.), which provide environmental services or can be connected with a broader issue of the employment consequences. Most of the literature focuses on the direct employment. The potential impacts of green growth policies on the labour market situation tend to be overlooked. More attention also needs to be paid to how labour markets operate in different types of economy. There are many challenges, especially for the countries, which have built their industrial development strategies around the cheap carbon-based energy. The induced structural green change should be accompanied by active labour market policies. There are many difficulties connected with defining green economy, especially green employment. To determine the impact of green economic policy’s tools one requires a precise definition of green jobs. It is very difficult mainly because of many definitions of green jobs in the literature. This impact is not only direct but also indirect. A very important thing is also to determine the main factors, which influence the green employment in the main strategic sectors of the economy at a national and regional level.

The main goal of this publication is to show the impact of climate policy on green employment in the EU countries. This will require precise defining of green jobs and to give the information about possible methods of this impact’s estimating. Main methods, which are adequate for estimating the impact of climate policy on green jobs’ creating were: the OECD ENV-Linkages model which is a recursive dynamic neo-classical general equilibrium model, dynamic approaches based on general equilibrium models (DSGE). There is also possibility to use indicators in the frameworks of taxonomic analysis (for example: Clark’s divergence coefficient, Euclidean distance, the measure of an angle and also chosen methods of objects’ grouping (for example: Ward’s method of grouping). Existing policies included in European Employment Strategy and the OECD Reassessed Jobs Strategy, provide the essential framework for successfully managing the structural labour market changes required to decouple production from harmful environmental effects. Priority ought to be given to:

 supporting the mobility of workers and reducing the adjustment costs created by displaced workers.

 supporting eco-innovation and their diffusion by strengthening initial education and vocational training,

 reforming the tax-benefit system for workers in order to ensure that cost pressures generated by environmental policies do not become a barrier to employment. Taking into account a regional and sector specific of the employment structure, we can formulate many interesting conclusions and advice for climate and economic policy makers.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.em.18.4.4498