The green economy has grown so聽much in the US that it employs around 10 times as many people as聽the fossil fuel industry 鈥� despite the past decade鈥檚 oil and gas boom.
The fossil fuel sector, from coal聽mines to gas power plants, employed around 900,000 people in the US in 2015-16, government figures show. But Lucien Georgeson and Mark Maslin at University College London found that over the聽same period this was vastly outweighed by the green economy, which provided nearly 9.5聽million jobs, or 4聽per cent of the working age population. The pair defined the green economy broadly, covering everything from renewable energy to environmental consultancy.
Their analysis showed the green economy is worth $1.3聽trillion, or聽about 7 per cent of US GDP.
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The figures don鈥檛 cover the presidency of Donald Trump, who promised to protect coal mining jobs and exploit oil and gas resources. But Maslin says the figures聽show that Trump鈥檚 policy is聽economically misguided.
鈥淭he Trump administration with聽the 鈥楢merica first鈥� approach of聽鈥榝ossil fuels are good鈥�, is stupid when it comes to economics.
If you want to be a hard-nosed neoliberal economist you would say, 鈥楲et鈥檚 support the green economy as much聽as possible.鈥欌��
The US stopped recording green job statistics several years ago, but these suggested 3.4 million people worked in the sector in 2011. Maslin and Georgeson used a much聽broader set of 26 sub-sectors including wind and solar power, marine pollution controls, carbon capture, biodiversity and air pollution. Maslin says the figures have been underestimated in the past, partly because the green economy is so diffuse.
