A Surprising Barrier to the Green Energy Job Transition

The labor-market transition from fossil fuel jobs to green energy may be stymied by location.

Simply put, green energy jobs aren’t in the same places where fossil fuel jobs exist today, new research finds, and they aren’t likely to naturally arise in those communities in the future. As a result, policymakers should consider targeting job transition resources to fossil-fuel-heavy communities, says Morgan Frank, an assistant professor of informatics and networked systems at the Univ. of Pittsburgh.

“A policy intervention that creates one million new jobs targeted toward fossil-fuel dominated communities would produce more transitions from fossil fuels to green occupations than a larger policy intervention that creates five million new jobs in a way that is not targeted,” Frank says. “Being geotargeted here can do a lot to enable a ‘just’ transition.”

As of 2019, 1.7 million people worked in fossil fuel industries, according to The Brookings Institution. These jobs tend to cluster in particular regions, meaning they have an outsized impact on those areas.

Climate change initiatives often acknowledge the loss of these jobs inherent in a transition to green energy, with policymakers arguing that workers can move to renewable energy professions. For example, the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act has provisions aiming to create nine million new jobs in climate, energy, and environmental justice, while the European Union’s Just Transition Mechanism devotes $52 billion to...