Collaborative thinking on just labor market transitions

A critical and underexplored dimension of energy transitions

EDF and Motu Economic and Public Policy Research convened an international dialogue on just labor market transitions, building on extensive preparatory work including over 30 expert interviews and scoping papers.

The dialogue brought together labor leaders, academics, policymakers, and practitioners from both Global South and North across four focused sessions to address how energy transitions affect workers and labor markets. Participants examined:

• How workforce vulnerabilities differ fundamentally between developing and advanced economies,
• Where informal employment, limited social safety nets, and concentrated fossil fuel-dependent communities create distinct challenges requiring tailored solutions

This initiative exemplifies the RESET Network’s commitment to bridging technical energy modeling with real-world economic impacts, ensuring that decarbonization pathways deliver tangible benefits for affected communities.

The collaborative process resulted in a Nature Communications publication (now accessed over twelve thousand times) that synthesizes five key challenges:

1. Limited overlap between displaced jobs and jobs in green sectors
2. High-income countries’ solutions won’t always work well for low- and middle-income countries
3. Informal workers’ needs may be overlooked under conventional labor market policies
4. Place-based industrial policies have frequently been ineffective
5. Implementing the necessary policies requires substantial financial resources

By prioritizing South-South knowledge exchange and locally informed solutions, this work demonstrates the RESET Network’s core mission of supporting just transitions that are both technically sound and socially equitable, ensuring no worker or community is left behind in the shift to clean energy.