Thread by @Dr_Keefer

Is a “Just Transition” away from fossil fuels towards a decarbonized energy system technology specific? The basket of available & scalable technologies: Wind, Solar & Nuclear each come with characteristics that determine wages, levels of unionization & security of employment.🧵1/

When #GreenNewDealers imagine the jobs of a clean energy transition, they often nostalgically harken back to the post war era when generations of blue collar workers could support families on a single income in a unionized workplace & afford to send their kids to college. 2/

This was the reality of many blue collar jobs before the neoliberal era crushed the labour movement. As a result, much of Western manufacturing was offshored, leading to a cut throat race to the bottom for wages & working conditions. 3/

With the availability of new hydroelectric and geothermal sites limited by geography, we are left with wind, solar & nuclear as the potentially scalable tools for a clean energy transition. We must examine their characteristics & potential of delivering a just transition. 4/

New Left thinkers, like @SethDKlein, imagine a return to world war two levels of western manufacturing & production, to churn out the millions of solar panels & hundreds of thousands of wind turbines needed to achieve a net zero future. 5/

The reality is that there is no significant Western manufacturing sector for wind & solar. Despite our best efforts, we have been unable to compete with countries like China and Vietnam precisely because of their low labour standards & dirt cheap coal powered electricity. 6/

Wind & solar jobs in North America largely consist of low skilled labour, installing foreign made solar panels to frames & erecting “offshored” wind turbines. The jobs consist almost entirely of installation and decommissioning every 20-30 years. 7/

Employment is therefore not tied to a local community. Workers instead move from one facility to another unable to anchor their families in a stable community. There are no parking lots outside of a wind or solar farm. These are the energy worker equivalent of “Carnie” jobs. 8/

Progressives can fantasize all they like, but low skilled, transient labour with a foreign supply chain cannot negotiate itself the dignified wages and secure employment that they aspire to as part of a just transition. 9/

The union movement wins concessions through the threat of withholding its labour. Workerless facilities like wind & solar farms do not offer that opportunity. Unfortunately, a transition to wind & solar is just another race to the bottom for western energy workers. 10/

In addition, as progressives that purport to care about international human rights, we should be concerned about a just transition for workers internationally. There are credible allegations of forced labour within the solar supply chain. 11/

Forty percent of the world's polysilicon, the base ingredient for solar panels, comes from western China where a dystopian security state imprisons & exploits the labour of a significant portion of the Uyghur ethnic majority. 12/

In contrast, where I live in Canada. CANDU nuclear with its proven track record of deep decarbonisation, is from uranium mine to power plant 96% made in Canada mostly by unionized labour. 13/

As a society, every dollar we spend on CANDU stays within the Canadian economy supporting permanent, intergenerational jobs tied to prosperous local communities. 14/

In contrast to wind & solar facilities, nuclear plants provide high paying, intergenerational skilled jobs rooted in a local community. Nuclear jobs are one of the last bastions of industrial work the Green New Dealers allude to in their call for a #justtransition. 15/

Because nuclear requires large local workforces of highly skilled labour for construction and operation it is not vulnerable to offshoring. Supply chains are localized and money invested in the sector remains in country and helps local communities to prosper. 16/

In Canada, nuclear workers provided 90% of the energy required for the Ontario coal phaseout, North America’s greatest greenhouse gas reduction. Ccoal workers were seamlessly transitioned into high quality jobs in nuclear facilities, a textbook template for a just transition.17/

It's time that Green New Dealers re-examine their allegiance to the 300 billion/year largely privatized wind & solar industry & reconsider publicly owned nuclear as the deep decarbonization technology that offers fossil fuel workers the best opportunity for just transition. 18/

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