US energy efficiency jobs are major source of employment, helping energy transition: report

More people than work in the US energy efficiency space than any other energy industry sector, including natural gas, oil, and coal, and the energy efficiency workforce grew by over 2% last year, according to the latest annual Energy Efficiency Jobs in America report.

In 2022, 2,215,432 Americans worked in the energy efficiency industry, however those numbers still are not back to pre-COVID levels when in 2019 nearly 2.4 million Americans held energy efficiency jobs, according to the report.

The national nonpartisan business group E2, partnered with the nonprofit E4TheFuture to release the Energy Efficiency Jobs in America report.

"This year we've seen New England's grid operator completely change its stance on winter reliability based on flattening demand due to hundreds of thousands of homes and buildings having done energy efficiency work, Joe Curtatone, president of the Northeast Clean Energy Council, said in an Oct. 23 email.

"Combined with mass solarization, it's changing our entire system. The Northeast has been the most aggressive region in doing energy efficiency conversions and it turns out all that work adds up to something huge," Curtatone said.

The US has the potential to reduce its power demand by 741,000 GWh, according to the US Department of Energy.

Electrifying some end-use energy services in the buildings, transportation, and industrial sectors is an important strategy for decarbonizing those sectors. Enabling more efficient use of electricity in the buildings, transportation, and industrial sectors could enable a cost-effective transition, the DOE said has said.

For 2023, businesses are projecting energy efficiency job numbers to grow by almost 6%, but finding trained workers remains a challenge, the energy efficiency jobs report found.

For the second year, the states experiencing the highest percentage growth in the number of energy efficiency jobs were Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and New Jersey, while states with the most energy efficiency jobs overall were California, Texas, New York, Florida, and Illinois, the report said.

Construction work is a major source of energy efficiency jobs. Over 15% of total US construction workers spend at least 50% of their time on energy efficiency, according to the report.

"Efficiency construction workers are in high demand, and those with key credentials earn competitive salaries, contributing to better buildings and energy-efficient infrastructure," the report said.