Transitioning to clean power without workers absorbing the shock

Harvard Kennedy School Professor Gordon Hanson and Harvard Vice Provost for Climate and Sustainability James Stock say an important part of the green energy transition will be mitigating its effects on employment, both in the United States and overseas. Talking about the clean energy transition can conjure up images of commuters using sleek electric trains and electric cars powered by the sun and wind, and of workers with good-paying jobs installing the infrastructure of the future. But the outlook for communities that are economically tied to the fossil fuel economy that will be left behind isn’t quite as sunny. Stock is director of Harvard's Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability, which brings together researchers from around the university to collaborate on climate solutions. Hanson is co-director of the Reimagining the Economy Project at the Kennedy School's Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy. They say making the green energy transition is urgent and vital, but to do it successfully will mean planning a different sort of transition for almost a million workers in just the American fossil fuel extraction and refining industries alone—not to mention millions of workers further up the fossil fuel ecosystem. Thanks to previous economic shocks like globalization, automation, and the decline of the coal industry, we’ve seen first-hand the devastation that large-scale job loss can wreak on one-industry cities and company towns. Hanson and Stock say harnessing the lessons from those prior transitions can help power a future that’s both green and inclusively prosperous.