Coal transitions—part 1: a systematic map and review of case study learnings from regional, national, and local coal phase-out experiences

Diluiso, Francesca; Manych, Niccolò; Cerutti, Nicola; Chipiga, Vladislav; Workman, Annabelle; Ayas, Ceren; Cui, Ryna; Cui, Diyang; Song, Kigook; Banisch, Lucy A; Moretti, Nikolaj; Callaghan, Max; Clarke, Leon; Creutzig, Felix; Hilaire, Jérôme; Jotzo, Frank; Kalkuhl, Matthias; Lamb, William F.; Löschel, Andreas; Müller-Hansen, Finn; Nemet, Gregory F.; Oei, Pao-Yu; Sovacool, Benjamin K.; Steckel, Jan Christoph; Schierl, Thomas; Wiseman, John; Minx, Jan

doi:10.1088/1748-9326/ac1b58

Cited by 58 publications

(35 citation statements)

References 169 publications

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“…While these findings have implications for the transition to cleaner energy systems worldwide, it remains an open question under what conditions voter backlash may arise. Transition plans in Australia, Germany and South Africa, for example, face fierce opposition from relatively small but politically well-organized communities of coal workers and supporters (Diluiso et al 2021), but an effect on voting behaviour has not yet been quantified in these countries. Further, our study cannot describe the exact mechanisms linking coal phase-out to voting behaviour.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Backlash to fossil fuel phase-outs: the case of coal mining in US presidential elections

Egli

Schmid

Schmidt

2022

Environ. Res. Lett.

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Phasing out coal is a crucial lever in reaching international climate targets. However, the resulting jobs losses might trigger voter backlash, making phase-outs politically costly. Here, we present an analysis of the electoral response to coal mining job losses in US presidential elections using matched and bordering difference-in-difference (DiD) estimators. Our findings confirm that fossil fuel phase-outs can result in voter backlash. In our main specification, we find a 4 percentage-point (pp) increase in the Republican vote share in 2012 (range across specs. = 3.6pp – 4.5pp), declining to 3.2 pp in 2016 (range across specs. = 3.2pp – 4.2pp), in counties suffering from coal mining job loss. The estimated electoral response is around three times as large as the number of jobs lost. We observe this response only in places where there was significant job loss, where these jobs accounted for a large share of locally available jobs and where income levels were low. Relative party strengths do not influence the results.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Backlash to fossil fuel phase-outs: the case of coal mining in US presidential elections

Egli

Schmid

Schmidt

2022

Environ. Res. Lett.

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“…This defines a research agenda of 'policy sequencing for feasible decline'. Today's policy landscape includes both efforts to compensate affected actors of decline while at the same time withdrawing all financial support from incumbents [2, 7,131,132]. However, how these policies should be combined is unclear.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Phases of fossil fuel decline: Diagnostic framework for policy sequencing and feasible transition pathways in resource dependent regions

2022

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Phasing out fossil fuels requires destabilizing incumbent regimes while protecting vulnerable groups negatively affected by fossil fuel decline. We argue that sequencing destabilization and just transition policies addresses three policy problems: phasing out fossil fuels, transforming affected industries, and ensuring socio-economic recovery in fossil resource-dependent regions. We identify the key mechanisms shaping the evolution of the three systems associated with these policy problems: (1) transformations of technological systems addressed by the socio-technical transitions literature; (2) responses of firms and industries addressed by the management and business literature; and (3) regional strategies for socio-economic recovery addressed by the regional geography and economics literatures. We then draw on Elinor Ostrom’s approach to synthesize these different bodies of knowledge into a diagnostic tool which enables scholars to identify the phase of decline for each system, across which the nature and importance of different risks to sustained fossil fuel decline varies. The main risk in the first phase is lock-in or persistence of status quo. In the second phase, the main risk is backlash from directly affected companies and workers. In the third phase the main risk is regional despondence. We illustrate our diagnostic tool with three empirical cases of phases of coal decline: South Africa (phase 1), the United States (phase 2), and the Netherlands (phase 3). Our review contributes to developing effective policy sequences for phasing out fossil fuels.

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“…Analyses of the drivers and effects of coal industry maturation, transition and decline outside China are dominated by studies of the United States (U.S.), United Kingdom (U.K.), and Western Europe, particularly Germany. Eastern Europe and developing economies at earlier stages of transition are systematically under-represented [19]. While coal was, until relatively recently, the main source of primary energy in most advanced economies, the energy market structures and political systems under which their coal transitions took, or are taking place, are very different to those in China.…”

Section: Coal Transitions Outside Chinamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A comprehensive review of the literature on coal transitions [19] finds that loss of employment is their most frequently documented economic consequence. The U.K., Western Europe and the U.S. exhibited a sustained decline in coal industry employment in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.…”

Section: Coal Transitions Outside Chinamentioning

confidence: 99%

Estimating the Employment and Fiscal Consequences of Thermal Coal Phase-Out in China

Clark

Zhang

2022

Energies

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China hosts over half of global coal-fired power generation capacity and has the world’s largest coal reserves. Its 2060 carbon neutrality goal will require coal-fired electricity generation to shrink dramatically, with or without carbon capture and storage technology. Two macroeconomic areas in which the socioeconomic impact of this decline is felt are losses in jobs and tax revenues supported by thermal coal mining, transport and power generation. At the national level, under a ‘baseline’ (B) scenario consistent with China’s carbon neutrality goal, labour productivity growth in coal mining implies that significant job losses will occur nationally in the medium term, even if all coal plants continue operating as planned. Jobs supported by the coal power industry would decline from an estimated 2.7 million in 2021, to 1.44 million in 2035 and 94,000 in 2050, with jobs losses from mining alone expected to exceed 1.1 million by 2035. Tax revenues from thermal coal would total approximately CNY 300 billion annually from 2021–2030, peaking in 2023 at CNY 340 billion. This is significantly less than estimated subsidies of at least CNY 480 billion, suggesting coal is likely a net fiscal drain on China’s public finances, even without accounting for the costs of local pollution and the social cost of carbon. As coal plant retirements accelerate, from 2034 onwards, fiscal revenues begin to fall more rapidly, with rates of decline rising from 1% in the 2020s to over 10% a year by the 2040s. More aggressive climate policy and technology scenarios bring job and tax losses forward in time, while a No Transition policy, in which all currently planned coal plants are built, delays but does not ultimately prevent these losses. At the provincial level, China’s major coal-producing provinces will likely face challenges in managing the localised effects of expected job losses and finding productive alternative uses for this labour. Governments of coal-producing provinces like Inner Mongolia, with an industry highly dependent on exports to other provinces, are more exposed than others to declining tax revenues from coal, and more insulated from job losses, given their high current degree of labour efficiency. Although their provincial revenues are likely to remain stable until the early 2030s under the B scenario, the possibility of increasing policy stringency underlines the need for revenue and skill base diversification. At the firm level, China’s ‘Big Five’ state-owned power companies were responsible for over 40% of both jobs and tax revenues in 2021. The number of jobs supported by the activities of each of the largest ten firms, with one exception, will decline by 71–84% by the early 2040s, with the tax contribution of each declining by 43–69% in the same period.

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Coal transitions—part 1: a systematic map and review of case study learnings from regional, national, and local coal phase-out experiences

Cited by 58 publications

References 169 publications

Backlash to fossil fuel phase-outs: the case of coal mining in US presidential elections

Backlash to fossil fuel phase-outs: the case of coal mining in US presidential elections

Phases of fossil fuel decline: Diagnostic framework for policy sequencing and feasible transition pathways in resource dependent regions

Estimating the Employment and Fiscal Consequences of Thermal Coal Phase-Out in China

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