Full Title: Distributional Equity in the Employment and Wage Impacts of Energy Transitions
Author(s): Ben Gilbert, Ben Hoen, and Hannah Gagarin
Publisher(s): Energy Markets and Policy - Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Publication Date: June 27, 2024
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Description (excerpt):
The authors use restricted-access, geocoded data on the near-universe of workers in 23 U.S. states to quantify the impact of wind energy development on local earnings and employment, by race, ethnicity, sex, and educational attainment. They find significant impacts that persist for several years beyond the project construction phase. The estimates are larger than those from previous studies, but still small relative to typical economic multipliers for fiscal spending or investment in other industries. The authors find the largest percentage increases for black workers and workers who either do not have a high school diploma, or who have a college degree. they also find the economic gains for men to be much larger than those for women. Finally, they find estimates from data aggregated to the county-level to be significantly lower than our worker-level estimates.
The authors suggest a number of areas for further study building off the justice implications of
our findings.