A new Joint Research Centre (JRC) report shows that in more than half of the EU coal regions the switch to clean energy can create more jobs than currently exist in the coal sector.
The report follows the adoption of the European Green Deal communication and the announcement of the EU’s Just Transition Mechanism, which aims to support communities most affected by the transition to climate neutrality by 2050, especially in the EU’s coal regions.
The deployment of renewable energy technologies in the coal regions can create up to 315,000 jobs by 2030, and up to 460,000 by 2050.
This report presents a concise overview of the role that clean energy technologies can play for the identified regions in the path to their transition from coal mining activity under a low carbon energy consumption and production lence. The focus is on power generation technologies from wind, solar photovoltaics (free standing and roof-top), bioenergy, geothermal sources, as well as on coal-fired power plants with carbon capture.
Specifically, the estimated values indicate a potential that is so far untapped in these countries. Besides Germany with a 0.03 GW capacity of geothermal energy in 2018 (IRENA, 2019), Spain and Romania have insignificant geothermal power capacity.
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