Recent data on 2009-2010 "green" investment, presented by Trendeo at the CNER conference

Trendeo was invited to take part in the CNER conference on green industries. The colloquium took place and there were some very interesting discussions about the development of "green" industries in France.

Below is a presentation of data from the Investment Observatory.

The main points are as follows:

- In 2009-2010, the nine "green" sectors tracked by Trendeo led all industrial sectors in terms of jobs created by announced investments and divestments;

- these investments are more industrial and R&D-intensive than total investments in France;

- In 2009-2010, only the solar industry created jobs at all the stages identified in our study (R&D, manufacturing, production and operation, marketing and distribution);

- public support is likely to play a decisive role in the future of green industries. It is involved at every stage, from R&D support (which comes massively from public bodies or companies) to tax credits for consumers (of electric vehicles, insulating materials, solar panels for individuals).

The discussions that followed this presentation, in addition to many other points raised by all the speakers, focused on the following topics:

1. Green investments represent the leading industrial sector in terms of net jobs created by investments announced in 2009-2010. In terms of total employment, however, sectors such as the automotive industry will long remain ahead of green industries. It's worth noting that even for very traditional sectors such as the automotive industry, their weight in the economy can be the subject of debate, making their importance vary considerably (see this article by Sylvain Barde, OFCE).

2. There are many "green" investments that are not easily visible using the Investment Observatory methodology, which consists of recording investment and divestment announcements. In the case of "green" investments, we have only included those fully dedicated to "green" activities, corresponding to nine sectors. One participant rightly pointed out that in Franche Comté, for example, even though very few "green" investments have been recorded, several hundred high-level engineers are working for PSA to develop hybrid vehicles. There is thus a diffuse "greening" of economic activities that needs to be accounted for by other methods.

3. Data from Trendeo's Investment Observatory may also seem relatively low, with 11,793 net jobs created by announced investments in 2009-2010. It's true that this is a count of direct jobs only. As in the automotive article quoted above, it can be estimated that two indirect jobs are added for each direct job. In this case, over 30,000 jobs would have been created in the green industries tracked by Trendeo in 2009-2010.

4. The building industry is one of the most promising sectors for "green" jobs, particularly according to ADEME (and much less so according to the OECD presentation). This is a feature that doesn't appear much in the data collected by Trendeo. In fact, the building sector is undoubtedly the one where the widespread "greening" of jobs is most noticeable. In addition, this is a sector that operates largely on the basis of successive worksites of varying size, without the variations in jobs, whether plus or minus, being communicated and counted as investments. The sector is therefore probably a little less well monitored than others by the Observatoire de l'investissement. Finally, as the representative of the French Sustainable Development Commission pointed out, most of the jobs "greened" in the building sector are not new jobs, but conversions of existing jobs.

5. The discussions were very rich, and the various participants and speakers showed their interest in an exciting sector. Opinions converged on points such as the long-term strategic nature of these investments, for both economic and environmental reasons, and the importance of public decisions in this field.