THIS TALK WILL BE PRESENTED BY JORIS BÜCKER (OXFORD) ON WEDNESDAY, APRIL 27 AT 3 PM in a hybrid format.
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TITLE: “Occupations and the green electricity transition: A multilayer network approach”
Abstract:
The energy transition will shift employment from fossil-fuel based electricity to renewables. In this talk I will discuss ongoing work on labour market dynamics in the U.S. during a renewable electricity transition. We investigate the occupations of workers in the supply chain of different electricity generation technologies, using a two-layer network consisting of 84 industries (including eight electricity generation sectors) and 442 occupations. We split our analysis in labour requirements during the investment in new generating capacity (capex) and during electricity generation operations (opex). We use domestic U.S. input-output tables to include the upstream supply chains, and data on occupational employment per industry to track the employment embedded in the supply chains. Preliminary results show that different electricity generation technologies have a high degree of overlap in the type of workers they employ, compared to the rest of the economy. Most distinct are wind and solar. While workers in some occupations may thus be able to switch from fossil fuel based technologies to renewables relatively easily, others may have more difficulty, or may be more likely to find employment elsewhere in the economy. We next use our framework to quantify implied occupational changes for the next five years during a U.S. decarbonisation scenario. We compare potential job growth and loss in occupations with historical data on how workers have moved in and out of those occupations.