Where People Work in Renewable Energy

The International Renewable Energy Agency recently reported that 16.2 million people were employed in renewable energy across the world in 2023, an increase from 11 million in 2018. Even though the industry has an increasingly diverse geographic footprint, the bulk of employment is concentrated in just a handful of countries. China is the clear leader in renewable energy employment and it had 7.3 million jobs in its sector last year, 45 percent of the global total.

Brazil comes a distant second on the list of countries with the biggest renewable energy workforces, even though the combined workforces in the European Union and Asia without India and China are bigger. The largest biofuels employer on the planet, around 1.6 million people were employed in its renewable energy sector in 2023.

Employment in the U.S. renewable energy sector grew from 855,000 in 2018 to 1.1 million in 2023. Elsewhere, India has also recorded dramatic gains in recent years. It had 719,000 green jobs in 2018 and 1.0 in 2023.