Coal mining directly employs over 7 million workers and benefits millions more through indirect jobs. However, to meet the 1.5°C global climate target, coal's share in global energy supply should decline between 73% and 97% by 2050. But what will happen to coal miners as coal jobs disappear ? Answering this question is necessary to ensure a just transition and to ensure that politically powerful coal mining interests do not impede energy transitions. Some suggest that coal miners can transition to renewable jobs. However, prior research has not investigated the potential for renewable jobs to replace 'local' coal mining jobs. Historic analyses of coal industry declines show that coal miners do not migrate when they lose their jobs. By focusing on China, India, the US, and Australia, which represent 70% of global coal production, we investigate: (1) the local solar and wind capacity required in each coal mining area to enable all coal miners to transition to solar/wind jobs; (2) whether there are suitable solar and wind power resources in coal mining areas in order to install solar/wind plants and create those jobs; and (3) the scale of renewables deployment required to transition coal miners in areas suitable for solar/wind power. We find that with the exception of the US, several GWs of solar or wind capacity would be required in each coal mining area to transition all coal miners to solar/wind jobs. Moreover, while solar has more resource suitability than wind in coal mining areas, these resources are not available everywhere. In China, the country with the largest coal mining workforce, only 29% of coal mining areas are suitable for solar power. In all four countries, less than 7% of coal mining areas have suitable wind resources. Further, countries would have to scale-up their current solar capacity significantly to transition coal miners who work in areas suitable for solar development.

Highlightsd Implementing the Paris Agreement targets will entail shifts in energy jobs d Globally, we find an increase in direct global energy jobs under well-below 2 Cd Over 80% of energy jobs by 2050 are expected to be in renewables d Solar and wind manufacturing sectors will provide millions of jobs globally

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The government of Kenya has been trying to expand the electricity grid for decades, with little success—80% of Kenyans are still living without access to the grid. An alternative solution, off-grid solar lighting products, such as solar lanterns and solar home systems, increasingly provide Kenyans with decentralized clean energy. Kenya’s private sector market for off-grid solar lighting products has been developing since the 1980s, yet the key to rapid market growth was the introduction of a pioneering pay-as-you-go business model in 2011 that made solar products affordable for poor rural customers. Today, with almost 30% of all off-grid households using some type of off-grid solar lighting products, Kenya is a market leader. Other factors that have encouraged market growth include the massive need for power in areas where grid electricity is not available, the high cost and unreliability of grid power where it is available, a value-added tax exemption on solar products, numerous education and awareness campaigns, and expensive kerosene. However, poor quality products present a major challenge. This challenge will have to be overcome for the market to reach its full potential and to ensure that these products represent an effective and lasting lighting solution.

Coal use needs to rapidly decline in the global energy mix in the next few decades in order to meet the Paris climate goals of keeping global warming well below 2-degrees Celsius. In emerging economies such as India (the second largest producer and consumer of coal) this would entail reducing long-term coal dependency. Prior work has focused on a coal transition in India from a techno-economic point of view, yet little attention has been given to the socio-economic dimensions of this transition. This is in part due to lack of availability of datasets required for such analysis. The first step in understanding the socio-economic dimensions of a coal transition in India is to understand the scale of current socio-economic dependency on coal at the sub-national level. We contribute to this literature by creating a novel dataset comprised of all 459 operational coal mines in India, using multiple Right to Information Act applications (India’s Freedom of Information Act) and then combining this dataset with coal company wise employment factors to estimate direct job numbers at the district level (a sub-administrative unit). We find that coal is produced in 51 districts in 13 states in India with large variations in employment numbers among these districts. While Korba district in Chhattisgarh state is the highest coal producing district, Dhanbad district in Jharkhand state is home to the highest number of coal mining workers. This is the first attempt at understanding the socio-economic dependency on coal at a district level and future work could focus on quantifying other district level socio-economic indicators such as coal related revenues. The new dataset and the results of this paper will be useful for scholars conducting future work on coal transitions and related topics.