Tennessee has the fastest-growing clean energy workforce in the nation — and no, it’s not all because of EVs

Tennessee has the fastest-growing clean energy workforce in the nation — and it is not just because of all of the new electric vehicle manufacturing plants.

In 2022, the state added 5,000 clean energy jobs, representing a 6.5% growth from the previous year, according to a new report by the nonpartisan group E2. 

Tennessee had a total of 82,000 clean energy jobs at the end of last year. Among these jobs, there were 50,000 in energy efficiency, 16,000 in electric vehicles, 8,000 in storage and grid, 6,500 in renewable energy and 1,200 in biofuels.  

More: Tennessee secured $7B in clean energy business this past year — representing nearly 80% of new investments

In the U.S., energy efficiency is the single-biggest employer across the energy sector, with more than 2 million jobs. This field includes the construction, manufacturing and installation of energy-efficient appliances, lighting, building materials and heat pumps.

There is significant potential for more jobs in the energy efficiency subsector of weatherizing homes and upgrading tech to reduce electricity use. Cities like Nashville and Memphis are currently doing this work on a scale of about a hundred or so low-income homes per year through Home Uplift programs, while the need is in the hundreds of thousands. Any older home may need retrofits, however. One report found that nearly 1.9 million old, non-low-income homes in Tennessee likely needed efficiency upgrades that could reduce residential electricity consumption by 37%. 

Electric vehicles, along with hydrogen and fuel cell vehicles, are becoming a larger piece of the clean energy workforce. Nationally, about 127,000 clean energy jobs were added last year — accounting for about 3% of all new jobs added in the U.S. — and about 50,000 of those jobs came from clean vehicle makers.

The Inflation Reduction Act is expected to boost this trend. The E2 report did not include the promised job creations from projects announced after the IRA passed last August.

In Tennessee, companies promised the creation of more than 5,600 jobs for 14 new projects announced during the first year of the IRA. That equates to more than a third of all jobs announced through major investments in Tennessee during that period.