President Biden is vowing prosperous futures for union and blue-collar fossil fuel workers thanks to his clean energy agenda, but a study suggests that the promise of a smooth transition could go up in smoke.
Less than 1% of those working in “dirty” carbon-intensive industries such as fossil fuels transitioned to green jobs such as solar, wind or electric vehicles from 2020 through 2022, according to a research paper disseminated last week by the nonpartisan National Bureau of Economic Research.
Workers who are older or lack college degrees are significantly less likely to take green energy jobs. Those ages 25 to 34 account for 30 times the number of transitions of dirty-to-green jobs as those 55 to 64.
The study raises questions about Mr. Biden’s claims that his clean energy agenda and Democrats’ tax-and-climate spending law, known as the Inflation Reduction Act, will usher in a wave of climate-friendly jobs for those in carbon-intensive industries.
“Why the Biden administration cares about it is they think people are going to vote for them as a result of this,” Mark Curtis, an associate professor of economics at Wake Forest University and the study’s co-author, said in an interview.
He said that transitioning fossil fuel workers to employment in green industries may be achievable in the long run but current data fails to buoy White House hopes.
“In the short run, I’m not sure that’s justified by what we’re seeing here,” Mr. Curtis said. “There are relatively few workers who are making this dirty-to-green transition right now. The workers who are making it tend to be younger and better educated, which those workers are probably more likely to vote for Biden anyways.”
Speaking last week on the anniversary of the Inflation Reduction Act, Mr. Biden sought to bolster his case with examples, including a shuttered coal plant in New Mexico now making solar panels and a former West Virginia steel mill making next-generation batteries. He spoke about laborers and carpenters building solar farms, ironworkers and operating engineers building wind projects, and electricians installing solar panels and electric vehicle chargers.
“These incentives are going to help make clean energy jobs good-paying union jobs and ensure the benefits of a clean energy economy reaching communities left behind,” Mr. Biden said at the White House. “When they [got] left behind, they lost their pride. They lost a sense of who they were. They lost what was going on. To reach communities too often left behind — that’s the focus.”
Analyses of massive amounts of data indicate that Mr. Biden’s theory hasn’t played out on a large scale, Mr. Curtis’ study shows. Green jobs were five times more likely to be filled by workers with careers in other countries than those with domestic carbon-intensive jobs. Most foreign workers came from Denmark, the United Kingdom, Spain, Germany and India.
The vast majority of workers in the green energy sector came from other industries and white-collar occupations, including sales managers, software developers and marketing managers. First-time job holders filled more than a quarter (26.7%) of the positions, and more than 20,000 from overseas entered the industry.
The study, which used labor market analytics firm Lightcast to examine data from 130 million online employment profiles representing 300 million job-to-job transitions, found that those in certain parts of the U.S. are far less likely to switch to clean industry jobs. The authors note that a sliver of those who did make the transition have not benefited from a boost in EV-related jobs.
White House climate adviser Ali Zaidi did not respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Curtis noted that the data went only through 2022 and did not consider the $370 billion in Inflation Reduction Act green energy tax incentives that largely took effect this year.
In April, the White House extended an olive branch to coal country by highlighting new tax credits intended to provide economic boons to towns with shuttered coal plants and mines by generating clean energy jobs.
The Department of Energy said in June that overall energy sector jobs grew by 3.8% last year to roughly 8.1 million — eclipsing overall national employment growth — and the fastest growth was from clean energy.
The transition rate from dirty to green jobs has grown nearly tenfold from 2005 through 2021. Still, such a transition remains “exceedingly rare,” the study concluded. In 2021, 0.7% of those who left dirty jobs transitioned into green jobs, compared with less than 0.1% before 2005.
Researchers found that nearly 1 in 4 (22%) who leave carbon-intensive jobs transition to similar jobs.
Those with carbon-intensive jobs are most likely to jump to manufacturing, including those with college degrees (29.5%) and those without (24.5%).
For workers without college degrees, the next most common sectors were oil and gas (14.2%), professional, scientific and technical services (8.9%) and construction (7.6%).
For college graduates, the next most common sectors were professional, scientific and technical services (13.2%), oil and gas (7.7%) and education services (6.6%).
Mr. Curtis said the transition in the EV space is encouraging and clean manufacturing could “actually be a good way to ease the sort of transition away from carbon-intensive jobs.”
“For the IRA, to the extent it’s going to build green manufacturing here in the U.S., that’s somewhat promising,” he said.
The data also painted a geographic picture of those working in energy-rich fossil fuel states or cities less likely to transition to green jobs.
In Oklahoma City, Denver, Houston and Wilmington — in Mr. Biden’s home state of Delaware — more than half of the transitions went from dirty jobs to other dirty jobs.
Among the top 15 states with the highest dirty-to-dirty job transition rates were Delaware, Oklahoma, Wyoming, Texas, Ohio and West Virginia.
“There are definitely a number of places in the U.S. that if you were to remove the carbon-intensive job option, there would be really big hits to workers,” Mr. Curtis said.
The study was partially funded by the Washington Center for Equitable Growth and NBER’s Environment and Energy Economics program. The two other co-authors were University of Pennsylvania environmental and labor economist R. Jisung Park and Lightcast employee Layla O’Kane.
• Ramsey Touchberry can be reached at rtouchberry@washingtontimes.com.
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