Employment dynamics in a rapid decarbonization of the power sector

Anton Pichler, R. Maria del Rio-Chanona, J. Farmer, Matthew Ives and Joris Bücker

INET Oxford Working Papers from Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford

Abstract: Transitioning to a net-zero emissions power system will create and destroy jobs in different occupations, creating skill mismatches and labor mobility frictions. We analyze the employment dynamics of a fast transition scenario for the US electricity sector that reaches 95% decarbonization by 2035, using an input-output model coupled to an occupational mobility network. We find three distinct labor market phases during the transition: 'scale-up', 'scale-down', and a long-term steady state. During the scale-up phase, from 2023–2034, for every job lost in a given industry, twelve new jobs are created elsewhere. But only a few occupations experience a consistent increase in demand throughout the transition. We predict that skill mismatches will create labor frictions during the transition, especially in the scale-down phase. Without proper planning, rapidly growing industries will struggle to find skilled labor in the scale-up phase, and displaced workers will have difficulty finding jobs during the scale-down phase.

Pages: 62 pages
Date: 2023-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene and nep-env
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.inet.ox.ac.uk/files/Employment-dynamic ... the-power-sector.pdf (application/pdf)

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:amz:wpaper:2023-28

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in INET Oxford Working Papers from Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by INET Oxford admin team ().