Do Large-Scale Wind Projects Increase Local Employment? New US Study Says Yes, & Those Effects Last.

New Berkeley Lab study of more than 100 million US workers across 23 states finds clear evidence of increases in employment and earnings within 20 miles of existing wind projects that begin when project construction begins and continue for many years after. Black workers and those without a high school diploma enjoy outsized gains in both income and employment over other workers near wind projects.

The construction of onshore wind energy projects can be linked to several possible local economic impacts, including job creation, tax revenue, local landowner income, and changes to home sale prices, to name a few. Because of the difficulty of assembling high-resolution data to examine relatively small effects, employment and income economic impacts remain understudied. This study uses data from more than 100 million individuals held in the US Census Bureau’s Federal Statistical Research Data Center program, 9 million of those who live within 20 miles of existing wind projects and investigates employment and earnings records in the periods before, during, and after wind project construction.

Lawrence Berkeley National Lab’s new analysis, “Distributional Equity in the Employment and Wage Impacts of Energy Transitions,” which was completed in collaboration with the Colorado School of Mines, compiles a unique dataset that includes employment and earnings records from 96 percent of all workers, and all utility-scale wind projects, across 23 states occurring between 2000 and 2020. All previous analyses of wind energy impacts have relied on data summarized at the county level, which masks effects that might occur at close distances from the project. The analysis spans more than six years before each project operation begins to six years after and is focused on effects within 20 miles of turbines. This allows an unprecedented examination of impacts on local employment and income through the full wind project development cycle. The study will be published in the Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists in November but is being released as a pre-print version now here: https://emp.lbl.gov/publications/distributional-equity-employment-and. The authors will host a webinar covering the study results on Thursday, July 11th, 2024, at 1 PM Eastern / 11 AM Mountain / 10 AM Pacific. Register here: https://lbnl.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_2QqYkhkYRnqkL6L-1KFihg.

Key results include:

Effects are evident within 20 miles of an operating wind project but not beyond that. Income and employment changes outside of 20 miles are either too small or too sporadic to be identified statistically.

Within 20 miles of operating wind projects, we see increases in employment of roughly 0.4%. This equates to roughly 230 jobs over the project’s life. This is 2 to 4 times larger than those found in previous studies. These employment increases translate to one local FTE for each $2 million invested in the wind project.

We also see clear evidence of increases in worker income within 20 miles. An average of 4% increase in income is estimated for employed workers, equating to $1,270 annually. This translates into an increase of $0.16 for each dollar invested in the wind project.

Both employment and income increases remain six years after the wind project’s construction begins, which implies effects are experienced well after construction ends. We hypothesize these are spillover (or secondary) effects derived from increased tax and lease revenue accrued locally and wind project-related employment, all of which exist for many years, if not the project’s full life.

Segments of the population experience outsized effects compared to others. For example, black workers enjoy larger employment and income effects than white and Hispanic workers. Similarly, individuals without a high school diploma or those with a college degree see larger benefits than those who only completed high school. Finally, male workers are associated with considerably larger benefits from wind development than female workers.

Across all measures, the worker-level estimates used for this study are larger than county-level estimates, which are classically relied upon. This implies that the many studies that have relied on county-level estimates could be underestimating the size of the effects.

We thank the U.S. Department of Energy’s Wind Energy Technologies Office for their support of this work and the numerous individuals and organizations who generously provided data and reviewed our study.

Email courtesy of Ben Hoen, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Ben Gilbert, Colorado School of Mines (CSM); Hannah Gagarin, Sandia National Laboratory (formerly a doctoral candidate at CSM)

The Electricity Markets and Policy Department at Berkeley Lab conducts technical, economic, and policy analyses of energy topics centered on the U.S. electricity sector.