Greening regional development: employment in low-carbon and renewable energy activities

The promotion of low carbon and renewable energy (LC+RE) activities has become an important element of development policy in many regional economies. In practice, defining and measuring these activities presents conceptual, methodological, and operational challenges. This paper illustrates these difficulties using three recent estimates of LC+RE jobs for Scotland. The paper proposes that information on the LC+RE sector should be embedded in a set of Input-Output accounts. This would facilitate the planning, implementation and monitoring of LC+RE based regional development policy.