This online blog describes scenarios for transitioning global steel production to low-carbon practices. It focuses mainly on the technical options for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the sector, and the spending required to adopt these worldwide, with some discussion of how these changes might affect steel prices for consumers.
While it does not address the impacts of transition for stakeholders other than steel companies, this kind of descriptive profile can be useful as a basis for those interested in managing a just transition to understand possible development pathways for the sector, and thus be able to think through possible implications for workers, communities and governments.
The 2021 update of Costa Rica’s Nationally Determined Contribution to the UNFCCC (NDC) was developed based on quantitative information from climate action models and also qualitative elements, namely explorative scenarios on the future of Costa Rica to 2050.
Departed from a recognition that “many of the existing projection processes do not sufficiently include the different sectors of society and vulnerable groups; they are not sufficiently in tune with the complex political realities; and they imagine futures within a very narrow framework that can ignore important drivers of change, as well as lack reflexivity”… “foresight-based approaches allow for the consideration of complex local issues, as well as the imagination and anticipation of the transformational change required for climate resilience and ambitious emission reductions”.
To create relevant exploratory scenarios, around 150 stakeholders from the public and private sector, civil society and academia were invited to participate in online workshop sessions.
Once these scenarios were defined, in a second step over 300 stakeholders representing the sectors incorporated in the NDC were invited, through 15 online workshop sessions, to explore and describe the possible implications of these various scenarios for their sectors, and to help develop recommendations for how best to achieve climate goals. These sessions were organized into five thematic clusters – Agriculture, forestry, nature, water and oceans; Industry, construction and waste; Transport and urban development; Energy; and, Other adaptation issues (risk and disaster management, territorial planning, infrastructure, and tourism). All of the workshop session presentations and session materials are made publicly available.
This study analyzed the employment implications for Antigua and Barbuda of transitioning to a low carbon economy, focusing particularly on the electricity and road transport sectors. Employment impacts for a scenario based on the current draft NDC targets (including achieving 86% of renewable energy by 2030 and road transport being based 100% on renewable energy by 2040 and a ban on new internal combustion engine vehicles by 2028) are compared to a Business-as-Usual Scenario without action to achieve these transitions.
The scenarios, once defined, are used for both quantitative and qualitative analysis. The quantitative analysis focused on direct jobs in the electricity and transport sectors using an employment factor approach, for which multipliers specific to Antigua and Barbuda were derived by engaging stakeholders and local experts. Expert and stakeholder interviews also informed a complementary qualitative assessment of the context and wider implications of transition.
The report highlights various uncertainties over the timeframe out to 2050, and thus stresses that the results of such scenario development and analysis should be interpreted as an indication of the expected orders of magnitude and development processes, rather than accurate predictions of the future. It finds, for instance, that the shift to cleaner electricity and electrified transport could create substantial employment benefits compared to the fossil-fuel-dominated Business-as-Usual (BAU) Scenario, especially new jobs in the creation of green energy and transport infrastructure. However, it also highlights that such changes will negatively affect certain types of jobs and certain groups of people and that there are various risks of educational and temporal misalignments that need addressing.
This report notes that “climate transition risks are challenging to assess accurately given the long time horizons with high uncertainty about how policy, technology and socio-economic factors might evolve. Scenario analysis provides a flexible “what-if” framework to explore how the risks may manifest in the future”.
The Bank of Canada developed, therefore, a set of four global climate transition scenarios to help identify various types of risks that could create stress to the Canadian economy and the financial system. The scenarios, which vary in level of ambition and timing of global climate policy and the pace of technological change, are meant to allow the possible impacts of different plausible transition pathways to be explored, rather than be accurate or comprehensive forecasts.
These scenario narratives and the paths for global emissions and carbon prices were consistent with a set of scenarios developed by the Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS). To develop the NGFS scenarios, an expert group of climate scientists and economists were invited to contribute to designing a set of plausible future trajectories for how climate change (physical risk) and climate policy and technology trends (transition risk) could evolve. Each scenario was chosen to show a range of higher and lower risk outcomes.
The subsequent analysis based on these scenarios focused mostly on financial institutions’ Canadian and US exposures and covered the 10 most emissions-intensive sectors in the economy, including agriculture, primary energy, electricity, energy-intensive industries and transportation. It highlighted various risks to the economy and the financial system, both for individual institutions and the possibility of different macroeconomic effects. (declines in global prices of commodities as a result of changes in global climate policy could have particularly significant ipmacts on commodity-exporting countries like Canada). The analysis also showed that delaying climate policy action increases the overall economic impacts and risks to financial stability.
This study used scenarios to explore the potential energy poverty risks that could be associated with greater incentivization of less carbon-intensive energy sources in Chile, after an electricity-sector carbon tax was introduced in 2017. A business-as-usual scenario for broad economic development in Chile was compared, quantitatively, with four transition scenarios characterized by different types of technological transformation (combinations of solar, liquefied natural gas and hydro) and varying costs for these. These were used to analyse how many households – and which households – might be affected by energy poverty as a result of higher electricity prices.
These scenarios were developed through interviews with more than 300 expert stakeholders from seven sectors: electricity generation; mining and other industries; transport; commercial, residential, and public energy consumption; land use and agriculture; forestry; and waste. Experts brought not only technical arguments for consideration in the scenarios, but also normative arguments for their justification. This process therefore allowed realistic scenarios of technology penetration to be described, as well as possible evolution of the carbon tax rate over time to be considered.
Angul district in Odisha state produces more than 10 per cent of all Indian coal. It is also home to numerous coal-based power plants, and is a significant industrial centre. This report describes what a just energy transition might mean for Angul and explores how the district might plan strategically for a just energy transition while also building a green economy.
The report provides background to Angul’s economy, including employment, land use, demography, and environmental condition. It then provides a deeper dive into the coal economy, to its linkages with jobs and livelihoods, and of the social infrastructure of the area (such as healthcare, education and other basic amenities, as well as housing) and its socio-economic and biophysical resilience.
Methodologically, the study underlying the report used a mixed methods approach. It drew on primary research including household surveys, focus group discussions and individual interviews, as well as secondary research including a review of grey and scholarly literature and analysis of government and industry data.
The report summarizes a proposal for just transition, describing some of the key needs and themes that would support planning for a just energy transition. This includes proposals for an inclusive planning mechanism, options for economic diversification, needs for workforce reskilling, land and asset repurposing options, and the financial resources that may be needed. It also describes the possible roles of different actors in supporting the transition.
One whole section of the government’s Framework for a Just Transition in South Africa is devoted to descriptive profiles of four sectors and value chains that are at-risk in the low-carbon transition and which form part of the formal economy: the coal, automotive, agriculture and tourism sectors. Each profile considers the risks facing the sector from climate change impacts and from climate policies (and associated market shifts). Each discusses the possible effects on employment, businesses that supply goods and services to industry, downstream users or consumers, and communities. They flag how some groups – for instance, in the case of agricultural transition, farmworkers, smallholder farmers, and rural women– could be particularly vulnerable to these changes. The profiles also identify how the impacts of low-carbon transition are likely to be felt hardest in certain parts of the country. The summary of projected impacts in these sectors notionally covers the period out to 2050 and breaks down impacts into different time periods.
The profiles draw on earlier work such as South Africa’s National Employment Vulnerability Assessment: Analysis of potential climate-change related impacts and vulnerable groups and its Sector Jobs Resilience Plans
The Framework report itself notes that these profiles are not exhaustive either in terms of their treatment of impacts or coverage, and stresses that ongoing work should explore impacts on the informal economy, and on other groups and sectors. It also stresses the importance of applying a spatial lens to these profiles, noting how risks and vulnerabilities are not evenly spread across South African society.
The EU START project has published regional profiles for various European coal regions, including in Spain, Romania, Czech Republic, Poland, Greece and Ireland. Theses include information on: the social and economic characteristics of the region, the nature and timing of the expected transition, current strategies and plans for economic diversification and decarbonization, the principal actors in development and implementation of transition strategies and plans (essentially a partial rendering of a comprehensive stakeholder mapping exercise), some of the contextual challenges that transition planning will likely need to address (e.g. infrastructure gaps, reliability and cost of electricity supply), as well as current partnerships and initiatives that could be useful in supporting economic diversification / development and decarbonization.
As one example, the regional profile about coal mining transition in the Karlovy Vary region Czech Republic, includes a description of:
- trends and projections in the region’s demographic and economic characteristics;
- coal-related industry and locations and communities, including their socio-economic characteristics and challenges;
- the current status and anticipated timeline of coal transition;
- current strategies and plans for decarbonization, and for economic diversification and regional development;
- relevant actors involved in transition strategies and plans;
- the nature and scale of social, economic, environmental and energy system challenges that are associated with transition;
- Identified weaknesses in skills, infrastructure and other aspects of the regional economy that may need to be addressed as part of the transition; and
- Some of the potential opportunities for the region, including for the labour force as well as potential investment sites, options for repurposing of infrastructure, and digital and transport connectivity of the region.
This online blog describes scenarios for transitioning global steel production to low-carbon practices. It focuses mainly on the technical options for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the sector, and the spending required to adopt these worldwide, with some discussion of how these changes might affect steel prices for consumers.
While it does not address the impacts of transition for stakeholders other than steel companies, this kind of descriptive profile can be useful as a basis for those interested in managing a just transition to understand possible development pathways for the sector, and thus be able to think through possible implications for workers, communities and governments.