Study On The Long-term Employment Impact And Vulnerability Assessment Of Coal Power Transition At Provincial Level

Currently,it has become a common issue for all countries in the world to work together to address climate change and promote green and low-carbon transition.With the proposal of the ’dual carbon’ goal in China,green,low-carbon and high-quality economic development has become a new goal and direction for China’s current development.For a long time,China’s resource endowment of rich coal,poor oil,and limited gas has determined the pattern of energy consumption dominated by coal,as well as the production and consumption structure of electricity dominated by coal power.As one of the main sources of carbon emissions,the power sector is the core sector promoting the low-carbon transition of the entire society.China’s power industry needs to achieve net zero carbon emissions around 2045.Therefore,in the long run,conventional coal power will gradually phase out,and coal power will shift from providing base-load electricity to providing system regulation capacity and safety assurance.In the process of coal power transition,the coal industry will inevitably face the fate of gradually reducing the production scale and even being eliminated.A large number of coal power units will be retired in advance.Some problems and challenges will inevitably accompany them.For coal-based provinces,the coal and coal power industries have contributed a large amount of tax revenue and employment opportunities.The rapid transition of electricity may lead to a series of social and economic problems such as a sharp decrease in tax revenue and a surge in laid-off employees,and even exacerbate the development imbalance between regions in China.Assessing the employment impact of coal power transition can provide decision-making support for provinces to scientifically formulate energy transition policies,and has important practical significance for promoting the transition of the power industry.Based on two typical coal power development scenarios and combined with micro-level coal power plant data,the article assesses the employment impacts of coal power transition through a bottom-up tabular analysis method Then,a vulnerability assessment framework is constructed to identify employment vulnerable provinces in coal power transition.The performance of coal power transition in employment vulnerable provinces is evaluated by the entropy weight TOPSIS model.Finally,targeted measures for fair transition are proposed.Research has found that the number of directly related employment in the coal mining and washing industry and coal power industry reached 1.686 million in 2020.If no new coal power unit is added,about 16.8%of related employment will face unemployment when zero-carbon electricity is achieved in 2045.Continuing to add coal power units will increase this proportion to 36.9%.Based on the vulnerability framework calculation results under two scenarios,most provinces belong to low employment vulnerability areas,so there will be no significant concentration of unemployment risks due to the phase-out of coal power.High employment vulnerability provinces are mainly concentrated in coal-based provinces.Continuing to build coal power units will lead to an overall increase in vulnerability levels.A comprehensive evaluation was conducted on the performance of coal power transition in 9 employment vulnerable provinces,with the ranking order being Xinjiang,Henan,Shandong,Anhui,Guizhou,Shaanxi,Ningxia,Inner Mongolia,and Shanxi.The lower the ranking,the greater the dependence on the coal and coal power industry.Government departments should construct a transition management framework tailored to local conditions,safeguard the basic rights and interests of relevant labor groups in the long-term orderly phase-out process of coal power,and assist in the just transition of the power industry.