Zero carbon as economic restructuring: spatial divisions of labour and just transition

ABSTRACT

Strategies to reduce carbon emissions are set to be a powerful force of economic restructuring, creating new economic opportunities, and also disruption and divestment for some firms and sectors. A pressing issue for ‘just transitions’ is whether low carbon economic restructuring will challenge or reinforce prevailing geographies of spatial inequality and labour market (dis)advantage. In this article we return to the economic restructuring literature of the 1980s and 1990s to provide a theoretical framework for understanding ‘spatial divisions’ of low carbon work and how they might be shaped to ensure economically just transition. Our approach foregrounds questions of skills, training and pathways to employment across supply chains as key dimensions of just transition, providing a framework for analysis and intervention. The paper, therefore, brings new critical perspectives on low carbon transitions by conceptualising decarbonisation as a form of spatial economic restructuring and its potential implications in reinforcing and/or working against the existing patterns of uneven spatial development.

KEYWORDS:

• Zero carbon
• economic restructuring
• employment
• policy

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Aidan While

Aidan while is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning in the University of Sheffield and co-director of the University's Urban Institute. His research explores the overlap between economic development and environmental policy.

Will Eadson

Will Eadson works at the Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research (CRESR) where he leads a programme of work on the economic geographies of zero carbon transition, with a particular focus on just transition.