Green Economy in Baden-Württemberg

The environmental economy or green economy is considered to be one of the areas of the economy with the greatest growth potential. For this reason, the structure and development of Baden-Württemberg's environmental economy was examined in detail in this project, using the IAB Establishment Panel Baden-Württemberg as the data basis.

The corresponding study shows that in 2012, 9.6% of companies in Baden-Württemberg produced or offered goods and/or services for environmental protection. The area of “climate protection, renewable energies and energy saving” dominated in over a third of the environmental protection companies in question. It is worth noting that environmental protection companies account for no less than one sixth (16.6%) of companies in the manufacturing sector, while the corresponding proportion in the service sector is less than half as high at 7.3%.

Employees in environmental protection companies account for 15.8% of total employment in Baden-Württemberg. If we focus on the “actual” environmental protection employees, i.e. those employees who work in environmental protection companies specifically in the environmental protection sector, we arrive at a figure of 129,700 environmental protection employees for Baden-Württemberg for 2012, which, however, implies an underestimate due to certain data gaps. It should also be borne in mind that this analysis does not include the total number of jobs created by environmental protection in Baden-Württemberg, as the latter also includes employment generated indirectly by environmental protection outside the green economy in other economic sectors in Baden-Württemberg - i.e. jobs created by upstream suppliers to the environmental protection industry.

An examination of the characteristic features of Baden-Württemberg's environmental protection companies shows that they are older on average and larger than other companies in terms of turnover and number of employees; they also belong more frequently to the manufacturing sector and less frequently to the service sector than all of Baden-Württemberg's companies.

Companies in Baden-Württemberg's green economy are more active abroad than average, if one uses export participation and the export ratio as a benchmark. In addition, the environmental protection companies have a higher labor productivity than other companies, but this does not necessarily have anything to do with their activity in the environmental protection segment; instead, the fact that the environmental protection companies are more export-oriented than average could be decisive here - because exporting companies usually have a higher labor productivity than non-exporting companies.

At least in recent years, companies in Baden-Württemberg's environmental economy have invested more in their physical capital than other companies in relation to the number of employees, which indicates above-average capital-intensive production. At the same time, the proportion of companies producing product and process innovations is higher than in Baden-Württemberg's economy as a whole. Both could be due to the fact that environmental protection companies are of an above-average size. This could also be one of the reasons why the workforces of environmental protection companies have a higher level of qualification on average than employees in other companies. At the same time, however, environmental protection companies are more likely to experience difficulties in finding sufficient numbers of skilled workers on the labor market. It is to be hoped that this aspect will not prove to be a stumbling block for the environmental economy with its great growth potential.

Publication:

Tobias Brändle / Raimund Krumm / Philipp Nikelski: Green Economy in Baden-Württemberg, IAW Kurzbericht 4/2013 (in German).