September 26, 2023
Assistant Professor Morgan Frank (Department of Informatics and Networked Systems) has recently published a new article in Nature Communications.
Titled “Location is a major barrier for transferring US fossil fuel employment to green jobs,” the paper is authored by Frank, Junghyun Lim (assistant professor, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill), and Michaël Aklin (associate professor, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne). It seeks to identify barriers to achieving what is termed a “Just Transition” in debates about how to phase out the usage of fossil fuels.
Just Transition is an umbrella concept that connects concerns around the ethics surrounding the social costs of transitioning to alternative energy systems and conversations on the role of governance in that transition. One claim commonly made by advocates of a Just Transition approach is that concerns about the sustainability of existing energy systems should be rectified in part through providing public support to current fossil fuel workers for finding new jobs in the green energy sector.
By analyzing data that includes information about employment, skills, and job transitions within the fossil fuel industry, as well as 14 years of power plant data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Frank and his co-authors conclude that current fossil fuel workers are not co-located near current sources of green energy production. Additionally, they posit that while many fossil fuel workers do have skillsets that are relevant for transitioning into green energy production, most are not located in regions where that industry is expected to grow. These findings indicate that geographic factors are a larger barrier to a Just Transition approach than its advocates have previously considered.