World Energy Employment (WEE) report

• The second edition of the World Energy Employment (WEE) report was released by International Energy Agency.
• It tracks the evolutions of the energy workforce from before the pandemic, through the global energy crisis.
• The report provides a comprehensive stock-take of energy employment with estimates of the size and distribution of the labour force across regions, sectors, and technologies.
• The dataset provides granularity on workers along the entire energy value chain, covering fossil fuel supply, bioenergy, nuclear, low-emissions hydrogen, power generation, transmission, distribution, and storage.
• Additionally, WEE 2023 includes for the first time employment data for the extraction of selected critical minerals, including copper, cobalt, nickel and lithium.
• Global energy employment rose to 67 million people in 2022, an increase of 5 million from pre-pandemic levels.
• It said that more than half of employment growth over this period was in five sectors: Solar PV, wind, electric vehicles (EVs) and batteries, heat pumps, and critical minerals mining.
  • Of these, solar PV is by far the largest employer.

ABOUT INTERNATIONAL ENERGY AGENCY

• It was established in the wake of the oil crisis of 1973-1974, to help its members respond to major disruptions in oil supply.
• The IEA is made up of 30 member countries.
• Headquarters- Paris, France
• A candidate country to the IEA must be a member country of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
  • India joined this organization in 2017 as an Associate member.