Department of Political Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, 27514, USA.
PASU Chair, College of Management of Technology, EPFL, 1015, Lausanne, Switzerland.
Nat Commun. 2023 Sep 26;14(1):5711. doi: 10.1038/s41467-023-41133-9.
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.
绿色能源革命可能会使美国 170 万化石燃料工人失业，但向新兴绿色产业的过渡就业为这些工人提供了重新就业的可能性。在这里，我们利用美国能源信息署 14 年的电厂数据、人口普查局的工作转换数据以及劳工统计局的就业和技能数据，评估了今天从事化石燃料资源开采的人员是否位于同一地点，是否具有可转移到预期绿色工作的技能。我们发现，这些工人可以利用他们的流动性进入其他行业，并且与绿色职业具有相似的技能。然而，今天的化石燃料开采工人与当前的绿色能源生产来源并不在同一地点。此外，在考虑了联邦就业预测后，尽管获得了适当的技能，但化石燃料开采工人大多不在绿色就业增长的地区。这些结果表明，向公正过渡存在一个巨大的障碍，因为化石燃料开采工人在历史上并没有表现出地理上的流动性。尽管利益相关者专注于对化石燃料开采工人进行再培训，但这项分析表明，与新兴绿色就业的集中化将是公正过渡的更大障碍。
