Buildings

such as distributing cooking stoves was superior to many public-health programmes around the world.

Analysis of low- and middle-income countries for the WHO has shown that by 2015, the availability of improved stoves to half of those who in 2005 were still burning biomass fuels and coal on traditional stoves

“would result in a negative intervention cost of US$ 34 billion a year and generate a return of US$ 105 billion per year” (Hutton et al. 2006). The study concludes that “economic benefits include reduced health-related expenditure as a result of less illness, the value of assumed productivity gains resulting from less illness and fewer deaths and time savings due to the shorter time spent on fuel collection and cooking.” A potential global demand for 0.61 billion LPG stoves or electrical hot plates by 2030 to replace open-fire biomass fuel for cooking augurs well for job opportunities in areas such as sales, transport, maintenance and manufacturing (Keivani et al. 2010).

Benefits in employment The construction sector (including buildings) accounts for 5-10 per cent of employment at the national level, amounting to over 111 million people directly employed worldwide (UNEP SBCI 2007a; ILO 2001). Three-quarters of construction jobs are in developing countries and 90 per cent in firms of less than 10 employees or micro firms (Keivani et al. 2010). The real figure is likely to be much higher, as many construction workers are informally employed and therefore not accounted for in official statistics.

Greening the global building stock will impact global employment through job creation, job substitution, job elimination and job transformation. There are many channels through which green buildings generate employment including: the new construction and retrofitting of buildings, increased production of green materials, products, appliances and components, employment through energy-efficient operations and maintenance, the expansion of renewable energy sources and generation mix, and tangential activities such as recycling and waste management.

Several studies estimate the number of jobs created as a result of different types of green building investment. Before reporting the evidence, it is important to mention two key aspects of these studies. Firstly, new jobs created as a result of green investments are not necessarily green jobs. According to ILO definitions, to be considered green, jobs must meet as well the criteria of decent work. Some indicators in the building sector point to serious shortfalls in decent work. Box 5 discusses this issue in more detail.

Secondly, case studies often report the gross impact of investment on the labour market. Yet an accurate labour-

Category Energy value

Emissions value Water value

Waste value (construction only) – 1 year Commissioning O&M value

Productivity and health value (certified and silver) Productivity and health value (gold and platinum) Less green cost premium

Total 20-year NPV (certified and silver) Total 20-year NPV (gold and platinum)

(US$ per sq.m)22 Source: Kats (2003)

market assessment also requires evaluating the net effects. A number of jobs will be lost when investment is redirected to green buildings, when green materials replace brown materials, and so on. In practice, substitution, budget and external effects are not easily quantifiable.

Considering research on new construction, Booz Allen and Hamilton (2009) estimated that in the US green- building construction supported over 2.4 million jobs between 2000 and 2008 and these are projected to grow to up to 7.9 million between 2009 and 2013. Another study on the green building industry in Brazil shows that jobs related to greening the construction, commercialisation, maintenance and use of buildings grew from 6.3 per cent of the total number of formal jobs in 2006 to 7.3 per cent in 2008 (ILO 2009).

In terms of retrofitting activities, it is generally accepted that every US$ 1 million invested in building-efficiency retrofits would create 10-14 direct jobs and 3-4 indirect jobs. Using a value of 12.5 jobs per US$ million invested, a recent report (Hendricks et al. 2009) calculated the jobs that could be created if 40 per cent of US building stock – 50 million buildings – is renovated by 2020 with an average investment of US$ 10,000 per retrofit. This would result in a US$ 500 billion market, which would lead to 6,250,000 jobs over ten years. Table 5 further illustrates how the economy might benefit from a US$ 1 million investment in green buildings and how this would generate a net gain of 16.4 job-years over 20 years.

Important additional employment opportunities are also generated from the design of environmentally-

22. Original text presents the figures in US$ per sq.ft: $ 5.79 of energy value; $ 1.18 of emissions value; $ 0.51 of water value; $ 0.03 of water value (construction only) for a year; $ 8.47 of commissioning O&M value; $ 36.89 of productivity and health value (certified and silver); $ 55.33 of productivity and health value (gold and platinum); $ 4.00 of less green cost premium; $ 48.87 of total 20-year NPV (certified and silver); $ 67.31 of total 20-year NPV (gold and platinum).

355

20-year NPV $ 62.3 $ 12.7 $ 5.5 $ 0.3

$ 91.2

$ 397.1 $ 595.6 ($ 43.1)

$ 526 $ 724.5 Table 4: Financial benefits of green buildings