Mapping county-level vulnerability to the energy transition in US fossil fuel communities

Abstract

The energy transition toward lower-carbon energy sources will inevitably result in socioeconomic impacts on certain communities, particularly those that have historically produced fossil fuel resources and electricity generation using fossil fuels. Such communities stand to lose jobs, tax revenues, and support for public services. Which communities are most likely to be affected, which are more susceptible to being harmed, and how to target adaptive capacity programs—such as economic development and workforce training—accordingly are pressing scholarly and policy questions. In this study, we apply a vulnerability framework to calculate, rank, and map exposure and sensitivity scores for fossil fuel producing regions in the US. We find that, while counties in most regions of the United States will be affected by the transition away from fossil fuels, counties in Appalachia, Texas and the Gulf Coast region, and the Intermountain West are likely to experience the most significant impacts, and some regions experience overlapping and significant incidence of vulnerability. These results can be used to target future adaptive capacity programs.

Spatial-temporal dynamics of structural unemployment in declining coal mining regions and potentialities of the ‘just transition’

“…Model 1 finds that a single mine closure (one-unit decrease in the number of active mines) is associated with a 0.056 (0.041; restricted coal county sample in parentheses) percentage point increase in county unemployment rate. For the model using all US counties (coal counties only), we reject the null hypothesis 1 See Raimi 2021 [20] for a broader review of similar vulnerability assessments. of no effect at the 0.1% (1%) level.…”

Navigating occupational digitalization via skillshed analysis

“…As a result, prospective policy alternatives for reducing carbon emissions will come with a host of externalities; for example, using a carbon tax to reach net zero emissions in the United States would result in a 10 to 30 percent short-term price increase in carbon-intensive industries (Kay & Jolley, 2023). Other studies demonstrate that the transition away from fossil fuels creates significant, and often disproportionate, economic, workforce, and/or fiscal impacts on local communities, especially those in the United States with a history of dependence on fossil fuels (Jolley et al, 2019;Raimi et al, 2022Raimi et al, , 2023. Hence, of interest in this research is exploring how such global consequences will affect domestic occupational transitions for industrial sectors engaged in carbon-based production.…”

Results from a survey of life cycle assessment-aligned socioenvironmental priorities in US and Australian communities hosting oil, natural gas, coal, and solar thermal energy production

“…Processes with substantial societal benefits (e.g. decarbonization and accompanying impact reductions for air pollution, water consumption, solid waste generation, and other issues related to fossil fuel consumption) can still have real and negative local impacts (Haggerty et al 2018, Raimi et al 2022. One person's local benefit might be another's local harm (Graff et al 2018).…”