There’s a Transition Happening, but is it “Just”?

On July 30 of this year, AES Corporation—a U.S.-based electric power utility and generation company with over ten thousand employees worldwide—announced a paradigm shift in the world of renewable energy installations: Robots.

According to the company, the newly introduced “Maximo” robot, which has been deployed to install nearly 10 megawatts of photovoltaic modules so far, was its response to a shortage of solar panel installation workers. To keep up with the demands of a clean energy transition, as reported by the New York Times, solar installation companies are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence (AI) as a substitute for human labor for two reasons: There simply aren’t enough workers to meet demand for solar installations, and robots are more exploitable than human workers.

It is well-known that the renewables workforce is too small to meet the needs of a swift and complete transition away from fossil fuels. Less commonly discussed is the reality of working conditions in renewable energy industries—particularly in comparison to working conditions for fossil fuel jobs. Renewable installation jobs are notorious for inadequate pay, poor working conditions, insufficient benefits, low unionization rates, and geographic instability. According to the MIT Living Wage Calculator, as of 2023, a living wage in the United States was $25.02 per hour. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in 2023 that the median wage of solar panel installers was less than $23.50 per hour. That means that more than half of all U.S. solar panel installers do not make a living wage.

In stark contrast, fossil fuel workers earned substantially more than the living wage: The average pay for a boilermaker in 2023 was $34.20 per hour, and the average pay for a petroleum engineer was over $65 per hour. Moreover, while fossil fuel jobs offer stable employment and benefits, usually enforced by collective bargaining agreements, recent reporting reveals that renewable energy installers—a largely nonunionized workforce—must travel across state lines in search of temporary work opportunities with minimal labor protections.

The labor market itself and its existing incentive structure pushes workers toward the fossil fuel industry and away from renewables. Yet, renewable energy companies are responding to the lack of available workers not by raising wages to attract more workers, but by eliminating these positions and replacing them with robots that work for free and never sign on to collective bargaining agreements.

Facing an increasingly urgent need for a rapid and sustained shift away from fossil fuels, the present energy sector labor market conditions threaten to undermine policy goals and forestall the possibility of a just transition. By encouraging workers to remain in fossil fuel jobs, and consequently hindering them from joining the renewables labor force, disparities within the labor market will prolong the inequitable environmental harms of the fossil fuel industry while limiting the growth potential of renewable energy industries. Moreover, the replacement of renewable energy jobs with AI will leave displaced fossil fuel workers without options for jobs in the renewable sector when their fossil fuel jobs are eventually phased out.

Workers need not lose their jobs and economic security in the energy transition. Nor need they choose between a livable climate and a livable wage. A just transition is possible, but only by prioritizing the needs of workers—not profits—in the transition to a clean energy economy.

Sachin Peddada

Assistant Researcher

This is a part of the AEC Blog series.

LGBTQ+ rights are human rights: A look at the numbers

The LGBTQ+ rights movement was launched by the Stonewall Uprisings of June 1969, when Black transgender women mobilized in a spontaneous, days-long protest against police brutality. Since then, advocates and activists have called attention to the intersection between demands for increased LGBTQ+ representation and broader social movements to address disparities in incarceration rates, poverty rates, and climate change impacts:

Police brutality and incarceration: Research conducted by the Prison Policy Initiative has shown that LGBTQ+ community members are overrepresented at every stage of the criminal detention system nationwide. According to a survey conducted by the New York City Anti-Violence Project in 2012, almost half of LGBTQ+ community members who have had an interaction with law enforcement in the past year experienced police misconduct (e.g., unjustified arrest, use of excessive force, and entrapment). Data suggest that disabled members of the LGBTQ+ community experience heightened rates of incarceration, as do BIPOC LGBTQ+ individuals.

Homelessness: A study conducted by the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law in 2020 found that LGBTQ+ community members are twice as likely to have experienced homelessness at some point in their lives compared to the non-LGBTQ+ population. Black transgender individuals have a staggering 41 percent chance of experiencing homelessness at some point in their lives.

Poverty rates and average earnings: The Williams Institute has also found that members of the LGBTQ+ community are 40 percent more likely to experience poverty, relative to their non-LGBTQ+ counterparts. Moreover, according to the Human Rights Campaign, LGBTQ+ community members earn 10 percent less than the average U.S. worker (based on median weekly wage data). Transgender adults are disproportionately burdened by poverty and unemployment, as are Black members of the LGBTQ+ community.

Access to health insurance and poor health outcomes: A 2017 study published by Harvard University found that LGBTQ+ adults are twice as likely to be uninsured than non-LGBTQ+ adults. The prevailing system of employer-sponsored health insurance limits healthcare access for LGBTQ+ individuals, who are twice as likely to be unemployed than non-LGBTQ+ adults. The study also found that LGBTQ+ adults were more likely to suffer from chronic and mental health conditions, and discrimination in medical settings. Disabled transgender adults experience even worse health outcomes compared to other members of the LGBTQ+ community.

Climate change impacts: In 2020, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) noted that LGBTQ+ community members were "at the highest risk" for climate disaster impacts due to the increased likelihood of being isolated, unhoused, and/or mistreated in emergency shelters compared to non-LGBTQ+ community members.

Socioeconomic burdens fall disproportionately on the LGBTQ+ community compared to non-LGBTQ+-identifying adults. On the flipside, universal interventions that extend the rights of shelter, healthcare, and a livable wage to everyone have the potential to afford the largest benefits to the LGBTQ+ community. For instance, the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law found in 2019 that a proposed federal minimum wage increase to $15 per hour would raise wages for nearly 1.5 million LGBTQ+ adults across the United States. An added benefit of such proposals, in contrast to more targeted initiatives, is that universal policy initiatives do not require self-identification and the risks that it entails, thus offering identity protections to members of the LGBTQ+ community. While pro-LGBTQ+ policies include and begin with gender equality protections, broader policy demands for universal housing, healthcare, livable wages, an end to violent policing and incarceration, and a habitable planet strengthen the movement for LGBTQ+ equality while also improving living conditions for millions of other U.S. residents.

Sachin Peddada

Assistant Researcher

Tanya Stasio, PhD

Researcher

This is a part of the AEC Blog series

Our Loss Is Their Gain? The Societal Costs of Fossil Fuel Industry Profits

Data Sources: (1) U.S. EPA. U.S. Greenhouse Gas Inventory. https://cfpub.epa.gov/ghgdata/inventoryexplorer/#iallsectors/allsectors/allgas/inventsect/all; (2) The World Bank. N.d. "GDP (current US$) - United States." Available at: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD? locations=US; (3) The World Bank. N.d. "Oil rents (% of GDP) - United States." Available at: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PETR.RT.ZS? locations=US; (4) The World Bank. N.d. "Natural gas rents (% of GDP) - United States." Available at: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.NGAS.RT.ZS? locations=US; (5) The World Bank. N.d. "Coal rents (% of GDP) - United States." Available at: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.COAL.RT.ZS?locations=US. (6) The World Bank. N.d. "Inflation, GDP deflator (annual %)." Available at: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.DEFL.KD.ZG.

Over the past 30 years, the total societal costs of annual emissions—based on a social cost of carbon of (inflation-adjusted) $51 per metric ton of carbon dioxide emissions—from the U.S. economy have remained relatively steady, between $250 and $300 billion per year. In contrast, U.S. coal, oil, and gas industry profits have experienced substantial ebb and flow over the same period, ranging from a high of $335 billion in 2008 to a low of approximately $33 billion in 2015. Despite fluctuations in industry profits, for every year except 2008, annual societal costs exceeded annual industry profits, indicating a disconnect between fossil fuel companies’ market performance and the societal costs inflicted by their activities.

To reinforce this point, the cumulative value of societal costs (the total area under the red line in the above figure) is more than double the magnitude of the cumulative industry profits (the total area under the black line): Across the last 30 years, cumulative societal costs of U.S. emissions have amounted to $8.4 trillion while cumulative U.S. fossil fuel industry profits add up to $4.1 trillion.

According to House Committee on Oversight and Reform Chairwoman Carolyn B. Maloney, fossil fuel corporations continue to profit—bolstered by U.S. government subsidies and tax credits that amounted to roughly $662 billion in 2020 alone—while actively lying to the public about their stated commitments to addressing the climate damages their own activities have caused.

Despite the fossil fuel industry’s financial dependency on public dollars, the public cost of the industry far exceeds its profitability.

Sachin Peddada

Assistant Researcher

Elisabeth Seliga

Assistant Researcher

This is a part of the AEC Blog series

The Intersectional Implications of Illegalizing Abortion

The life-threatening and life-altering consequences of abortion bans are not limited either to woman-identifying or to cis individuals. Overly simplistic binaries like male and female or man and woman leave out the 12 percent of U.S. transgender men and nonbinary individuals who experience pregnancy and the 21 percent of pregnant trans and nonbinary people who receive abortions—higher than the overall 18 percent of all pregnant people nationwide who receive abortions. Not only do rigid gender binaries ignore the unique barriers and obstacles faced by pregnant trans and nonbinary people, but they also ignore race-based inequities in maternal health outcomes wherein Black and Indigenous people have a maternal mortality rate up to 3 and 4.5 times the rate for white people, respectively.

Recent research from the National Institutes of Health also reveals that disabled people face 11 times the risk of death during pregnancy compared to their nondisabled counterparts. Research in the journal Social Science and Medicine finds that among pregnant immigrants, undocumented patients are among the least likely to receive prenatal care; consequently, a 2007 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association finds that among Emergency Medicaid recipients—99 percent of whom are undocumented—childbirth and pregnancy complications accounted for 82 percent of all spending and 91 percent of all hospitalizations.

In the case of forced pregnancies due lack of access to a medical abortion, the resulting mortality will disproportionately affect trans, Black, Indigenous, disabled, and undocumented pregnant people. Research published in Duke University Press predicts that, under an abortion ban, overall maternal mortality is expected to increase by 21 percent and Black maternal mortality will skyrocket by 33 percent.

Given that low-income women are 3 times more likely than wealthier women to experience an unintended pregnancy, the deaths and other harms associated with forced pregnancy will fall along stark class-based lines.

Source: Reproduced from University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Medical Center, Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health. 2018. Socioeconomic outcomes of women who receive and women who are denied wanted abortions. Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH). Available at: https://www.ansirh.org/sites/default/files/publications/files/turnaway_socioeconomic_outcomes_issue_brief_8-20-2018.pdf

A landmark 2018 study conducted by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco finds that over half of all U.S. abortion-seekers live below the federal poverty level and over three-quarters do not have enough money to cover their own basic living expenses. The most common reason given for wanting to terminate an unwanted pregnancy is not having enough money to care for a child or support another one. People who are denied abortions are more likely than those who receive an abortion to become enrolled in public safety net programs like TANF, SNAP, and WIC, and are 3 times more likely to be unemployed six months later. People denied abortions are more likely to raise children as a single parent compared to those who receive abortions and are also more likely to be unable to afford their own basic needs.

The UCSF study results also suggest that forced childbirths impose significant financial duress on pregnant people, particularly for low- and moderate-income people and those in precarious economic situations; follow-up research by the National Bureau of Economic Research confirms that being denied an abortion creates significant and persistent financial burdens. It is disproportionately low-income people who will suffer the most—not just physically, but also economically—under an abortion ban.

The data are clear: The struggle for reproductive rights goes beyond a struggle for women’s rights. Reproductive justice is justice for transgender and nonbinary people, Black people, for Indigenous people, for disabled people, for undocumented people, for poor people, and for all people engaged in the struggle for bodily autonomy.

Sachin Peddada

Assistant Researcher

This is a part of the AEC Blog series

Segregation, Migration, Displacement: The Dynamics of Gentrification in Boston

**Source:** Enwemeka, Z., Ma, A., and Datar, S. March 31, 2022. “Boston gets billions in home loans, but white areas get ‘much bigger piece of the pie.’” WBUR. Available at: https://www.wbur.org/news/2022/03/31/boston-home-lending-neighborhood-data

Gentrification is a process that unfolds in three stages: segregation, migration, and displacement. Until redlining was banned in 1968, Black communities in Boston and across the United States were legally segregated from white ones and structurally impoverished due to the economic legacies of chattel slavery. In the decades since the Fair Housing Act was passed, white people have begun to move into formerly redlined neighborhoods, taking advantage of relatively cheaper housing prices and a tenfold racial wealth gap, and claiming a disproportionate share of home loans. The influx of wealthier white residents into majority-minority communities drives up housing prices, pricing people out of their own neighborhoods.

In neighborhoods like Dorchester and Roxbury, where white residents claim two to three times their population share in home loans, the socioeconomic changes associated with gentrification are inextricably paired with notable shifts in racial demographics as communities of color struggle to keep up with the rising costs of living in their own neighborhoods.

There are clear signs of gentrification in Boston, and they’re hard to miss—they have “For Sale” written all over them.

Sachin Peddada

Assistant Researcher

This is a part of the AEC Blog series

Breaking Down National Responsibility for Climate Breakdown

Under a global economic system predicated upon endless growth on a planet with finite resources, there exists a fundamental contradiction between resources and wealth. While wealthy individuals in wealthy nations profit from the exploitation and overconsumption of the world’s natural resources, the rest of the world suffers the consequences.

Climate change has quickly evolved into a climate crisis. As acknowledged by world leaders such as the U.N. Secretary General, urgent, transformative action is required by the end of this year to avert utter catastrophe. The U.N. International Resource Panel estimates that overuse of natural resources is responsible for more than 90 percent of ecological destruction, biodiversity loss, and resulting human health damages. A recent study by economic anthropologist Jason Hickel published in The Lancet found that, as of 2017, the world economy consumes 90 billion tons of materials (including biomass, metals, minerals, and fossil fuels) per year, far exceeding the sustainable yearly limit of 50 billion tons of consumption set by the U.N. Industrial Development Organization and other industrial economists.

The Lancet study quantifies national responsibility for global excess material use, estimating that the United States and other high-income nations are responsible for 74 percent of global excess material use. While mean wealth per person in the Global North is more than six times that in the Global South, the South is left bearing 82-92 percent of the economic and social costs and 98-99 percent of deaths associated with climate change, according to Hickel’s recent research. The material benefits of resource extraction are realized in the North, while damages of that extraction are offshored to the South.

Hickel’s work reveals that central to this dynamic is unequal exchange, or an unfair trade balance, between the North and South. Today, unequal exchange results in a net extraction of value (in the form of labor, resources, and commodities) amounting to roughly $10 trillion each year, which is 30 times the amount of net aid the North sends to the South, in terms of global average prices. Hickel’s study also finds that, on average, people in the North consumed 27 tons of materials (water, food, and natural resources) in 2015, roughly four times the sustainable per capita consumption threshold of 7 tons of materials, based on a total resource consumption limit of 50 billion tons per year and a global population of approximately 7.3 billion in 2015. According to Hickel’s research, almost six-tenths of excess consumption in the North is made possible only by the extraction of value from the South.

The blame for the climate crisis, however, is not shared evenly by all individuals in all high-income countries. A complete understanding of climate accountability must include major domestic and transnational power structures and relations, such as class, race, gender, and indigeneity, which determine and affect the perpetrators, material impacts, and human tolls of environmental injustices. For instance, to imply that all residents of the United States are equally culpable for the nation’s ecological damages is to disregard the nation’s extensive history of settler-colonialism, Indigenous genocide, racialized slavery, and economic violence. All of these injustices continue to disproportionately harm minoritized and disenfranchised peoples within the United States in ecological, economic, and health outcomes.

For example, the U.S. food supply and distribution chain wastes 31 percent of all food that passes through it, while more than 10 percent of the U.S. population is food-insecure, consisting predominantly of poor, Black, Latine, and other marginalized children and adults. Moreover, communities situated near resource extraction sites, including pipelines, refineries, and mines, face staggering health disparities nationwide, including astronomical rates of cancer, asthma and chronic respiratory illnesses, and premature death, particularly—again—among low-income and racialized populations.

Both within and between countries, the global economic system produces different versions of the same hierarchies of inequitable ecological, environmental, and human harms; a privileged minority commit the greatest offenses and reap the greatest benefits, while the global masses suffer the worst of the consequences. According to a 2020 study from Oxfam International, the richest 1 percent of individuals worldwide—approximately 76 million people—now own twice as much wealth as the poorest 90 percent of the population, some 6.9 billion people. Research from the OECD shows that the world’s poorest residents suffer the worst effects of climate change.

Both the extreme wealth of the few and the suffering of the many are owed to the same root causes of resource exploitation and waste. Nature’s 2020 Scientists’ warning on affluence states clearly that the world’s wealthiest citizens are responsible for the most environmental harm and warns that the current system based on endless economic growth is not tenable.

To date, political and economic forces have fueled global society’s acceleration toward climate collapse, enabling a select minority to accumulate unprecedented levels of wealth at the expense of the majority—and of the planet itself. The world economy’s existing wasteful practices of resource extraction and oppressive hierarchies of wealth are unsustainable and incompatible with a healthy climate, and immediate, radical change is required to save the planet from disaster.

Sachin Peddada

Assistant Researcher

This is a part of the AEC Blog series