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- Title
Location is a major barrier for transferring US fossil fuel employment to green jobs.
- Authors
Lim, Junghyun; Aklin, Michaël; Frank, Morgan R.
- Abstract
The green energy revolution may displace 1.7 million fossil fuel workers in the US but a Just Transition to emerging green industry jobs offers possibilities for re-employing these workers. Here, using 14 years of power plant data from the US Energy Information Administration, job transition data from the Census Bureau, as well as employment and skills data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, we assess whether people employed in fossil fuel resource extraction today are co-located and have the transferable skills to switch to expected green jobs. We find that these workers could leverage their mobility to other industries and have similar skills to green occupations. However, today's fossil fuel extraction workers are not co-located with current sources of green energy production. Further, after accounting for federal employment projections, fossil fuel extraction workers are mostly not located in the regions where green employment will grow despite attaining the appropriate skillsets. These results suggest a large barrier to a Just Transition since fossil fuel extraction workers have not historically exhibited geospatial mobility. While stakeholders focus on re-skilling fossil fuel extraction workers, this analysis shows that co-location with emerging green employment will be the larger barrier to a Just Transition. This study tests the case for the absorption of current fossil fuel workers in emerging green jobs from the perspective of their skills and location. It finds location to be a barrier in a Just Transition for these workers.
- Subjects
U.S. Census Bureau; UNITED States. Bureau of Labor Statistics; GREEN fuels; EMPLOYMENT forecasting; CLEAN energy; JOB offers; FOSSIL fuels; EMPLOYMENT statistics; EMERGING industries; LABOR bureaus
- Publication
Nature Communications, 2023, Vol 14, Issue 1, p1
- ISSN
2041-1723
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1038/s41467-023-41133-9