Jobs for a just transition: Evidence on coal job preferences from India

Brian Blankenship, Michaël Aklin, Johannes Urpelainen and Vagisha Nandan

Energy Policy, 2022, vol. 165, issue C

Abstract: As the global economy transitions to greater reliance on renewable energy, it is crucial that this be a Just Transition in which new jobs are created to offset reduced opportunities in fossil fuels. This is critical to mitigate political opposition to the renewable energy transition. We use a survey experiment in Jharkhand, one of India's largest coal-producing states, to identify the characteristics that make alternative jobs attractive compared to coal jobs. We provide evidence of a coal penalty: respondents were 36.2 percentage points [95% CI: 33.1–39.5] less likely to choose coal jobs than alternatives. Additionally, respondents were much more likely to select high-paying jobs, while distance was not a strong deterrent to job selection. The findings indicate that coal jobs are unpopular on the margin, and suggest the viability of policies such as jobs training programs and relocation assistance that allow workers to take advantage of higher-skilled, higher-paid livelihoods.

Keywords: Energy policy; Just transition; Coal; Renewable energy; India; Jharkhand (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421522001355
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:enepol:v:165:y:2022:i:c:s0301421522001355

DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2022.112910

Access Statistics for this article

Energy Policy is currently edited by N. France

More articles in Energy Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().