Igor Bagayev, Dieter Kogler , Julie Lochard (p)

Fabian Wenner

see extended abstract

Anet Weterings (p), Olga Ivanova (p), Dario Diodato, Mark Thissen

Ditte Håkonsson Lyngemark

The Dutch government aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in 2030 by 49 percent compared to the level of 1990. Reaching these goals requires major investments, a shift in energy production from fossil fuel-based to renewable sources and large-scale energy savings. Together these changes are called the energy transition.

This transition will cause major shifts in the production of good and services which will also affect the demand for labor across industries and regions. Demand for products and services that enable the energy transition (e.g., isolation of houses, smart meters) will increase vacancies in those industries, while in industries related to fossil fuel-based energy production employees may be laid off. Industries are not equally distributed across regions. Hence, in regions where the economic structure is more related to the energy transition will experience a larger impact. Whether this effect is predominantly positive or negative depends on the sectoral specialization of the region, but in many places both may occur at the same time.

For policymakers, an important question is whether employees in industries where job losses prevail can find re-employment in industries with an increasing demand for labour. Labor mobility between shrinking and growing industries lowers the risk of rising unemployment and, at the same time, enable employers in industries where demand grows to fulfill their vacancies. However, search frictions may keep those matches from happening: there may be differences in offered and demanded skills and in geographical location of vacancies and job searchers.

Combining an input-output analysis and a matching model, we investigated to what extent the energy transition, as currently envisioned by the Dutch government, may result in changes in demand for labour in industries and regions and whether this may result in increasing tension at the labor market. To address these questions, we adjusted the situation in 2013 in such a way that it is in line with the level of investments, energy use and type of energy production of the year 2030, and used empirical data on observed inter-sectoral and inter-regional job mobility to estimate the probability that workers may move from one industry to another. This provides insights in to what extent the current situation at the Dutch labour market can absorb the changes required for the energy transition. Results show that this is not the case and that there is a need to improve opportunities for labor mobility both between industries and regions.

Ditte Håkonsson Lyngemark (p), Camilo Acosta

Julie Lochard

See extended abstract

Fabian Wenner (p), Michael Bentlage, Martina Koll-Schretzenmayr, Juanjuan Zhao, Alain Thierstein

Anet Weterings

see extended abstract