Imagine you're a construction worker helping build America's renewable energy future. Business is booming in 2030 as solar farms and wind turbines spring up across the country. You're working overtime, your skills are in high demand, and the future looks bright. But then, just four years later in 2034, the phone stops ringing. Projects dry up. Jobs vanish. What happened?

This isn't a hypothetical nightmare. It's the reality that could face hundreds of thousands of American workers if we don't properly plan for the clean energy transition. New research from Oxford University reveals that the path to a carbon-free power grid doesn't create a steady stream of green jobs. Instead, it follows a dramatic three-act structure: a massive buildup, a sudden contraction, and finally a new normal that looks nothing like the peak years.

The findings challenge everything we thought we knew about green jobs and reveal a labor market story far more complex than "fossil fuels bad, renewables good." The research shows that achieving a 95% reduction in power sector emissions by 2035, a goal aligned with climate commitments, would create roughly 633,000 new jobs at its peak in 2034. That's 12 new jobs created for every job lost. Sounds great, right?

Here's the catch: most of those jobs disappear almost as quickly as they appeared.

The Three Phases Nobody Talks About

The researchers identified three distinct phases in America's journey to clean electricity, each with radically different implications for workers.

Phase one, running from now until 2034, is the "scale up" period. This is when America builds the infrastructure for a renewable future: solar panels, wind turbines, battery storage, and miles upon miles of new transmission lines to move clean electricity from where it's generated to where it's needed. During this phase, demand for workers skyrockets. Manufacturing booms. Construction sites multiply. Engineering firms can't hire fast enough.

But then comes phase two: the "scale down" from 2034 to 2038. Once the new infrastructure is largely built, the frantic pace of construction slows dramatically. The renewable capacity is in place. The grid is upgraded. Suddenly, all those workers who were in such high demand find themselves competing for a shrinking pool of jobs.

Finally, phase three begins around 2038: the "low carbon power system" phase. This is the new steady state, where America operates and maintains its clean electricity grid. The researchers estimate this phase will employ about 117,000 more workers than a business-as-usual scenario, a far cry from the 633,000 employed at the peak.

Think of it like building a house. You need a large crew of framers, electricians, plumbers, and roofers during construction. But once the house is built, you only need a much smaller team for ongoing maintenance and occasional repairs.

The Myth of the Green Job

Here's where the story gets really interesting. We often talk about "green jobs" and "brown jobs" as if they're two separate species. Green jobs are the future, we're told. Brown jobs, tied to fossil fuels, are dinosaurs heading for extinction. Train for solar panel installation or wind turbine maintenance, and you'll be set for life.

The reality is far more nuanced. The researchers found that very few occupations fit neatly into either category.

Take construction laborers. Are they green or brown? During the scale up phase, they're heroes of the energy transition, building the foundation for solar farms and wind projects. Their job prospects look fantastic. But come the scale down phase, demand for their skills plummets alongside demand for fossil fuel workers. They're neither fully green nor brown. They're what the researchers call "temporary growth" occupations.

In fact, only three occupations see consistent growth throughout the entire transition: solar panel installers, wind turbine technicians, and power line installers. That's it. Just three occupations out of 539 studied. These are the true green jobs, the ones that grow during construction and remain in demand afterward for ongoing maintenance and expansion.

On the flip side, 13 occupations face consistent decline: mostly workers in coal mining, natural gas extraction, and fossil fuel power plant operations. These are the genuinely stranded workers, the ones who need the most help transitioning to new careers.

But the biggest group, 97 occupations employing hundreds of thousands of workers, falls into that "temporary growth" category. They include production workers, construction trades, engineers, and even some managers and administrative staff. These workers are crucial for making the transition happen quickly, but their boom times won't last.

The Skills Mismatch Crisis

Now we get to the really tricky part: even when jobs exist, the right workers might not be able to fill them.

The researchers mapped out a network showing which occupations workers typically move between. It turns out that careers tend to follow predictable paths based on transferable skills. An electrician might become an electrical power line installer. A construction laborer might move into solar panel installation. These transitions feel natural because the skills overlap.

But here's the problem the research uncovered: during the scale up phase, many of the booming occupations are connected to each other in this skills network. When demand for tool and die makers increases, so does demand for other manufacturing occupations that require similar skills. This creates fierce competition for workers. Companies struggle to fill positions because everyone is hiring from the same small pool of qualified people.

During the scale down phase, the opposite happens. When construction jobs dry up, so do many of the natural alternative careers for construction workers. A construction laborer looking for work finds that related occupations, ironwork, carpentry, masonry, are also shedding workers. The skills network that usually helps workers find new jobs becomes a trap.

This is what economists call a "skill mismatch friction." It's not that there are no jobs. It's not that workers are unwilling to retrain. It's that the timing and location of job losses and job gains don't align with the pathways workers typically follow between occupations.

The research uses a measure called "assortativity" to quantify this problem. Without getting into the mathematical weeds, think of it this way: if you're a node in a network and all your neighboring nodes are experiencing the same shock you are, you're in trouble. If you're losing your job and everyone with similar skills is also losing theirs, finding new work becomes exponentially harder.

The researchers found that assortativity is particularly high during the scale down phase. Translation: this is when skill mismatches will cause the most pain.

Real People, Real Consequences

Let's make this concrete with a few examples from the research.

Consider wind turbine service technicians, one of the few consistent growth occupations. Demand for these workers is expected to increase by 80% relative to a no-new-policy baseline. These technicians need to be hired and trained soon, or projects will face delays. But here's the challenge: wind turbines are typically in rural areas, far from major population centers. The workers who currently have the most closely related skills, energy engineers, solar panel installers, power plant operators, pipefitters often live in cities or near existing power plants.

Getting these workers to move to rural wind farms, or training rural workers from scratch, takes time and money. Without active intervention, skill shortages could slow the entire transition.

Now consider power plant operators. These workers currently run coal and natural gas plants. As those plants shut down, about 5,000 of these jobs will disappear relative to the baseline scenario. That might not sound like much in an economy of 161 million workers, but it's devastating if you're one of them.

Here's the silver lining: power plant operators have skills that transfer reasonably well to operating and maintaining renewable energy facilities. They're actually among the occupations most closely related to wind turbine technicians. If the timing works out, displaced fossil fuel plant operators could transition into operating the new renewable facilities.

But timing is everything. If the fossil fuel plants in a region shut down before the renewable facilities open, workers face a gap. They might need to relocate or find temporary work in other industries. If the renewable facilities are built and operating before the fossil fuel plants close, competition for skilled workers intensifies.

Then there are the temporary growth workers. Take construction laborers. The research predicts their demand will spike during the scale up phase, with thousands of additional jobs available. Great news, right? But come 2034, as major projects wind down, demand crashes. These workers find themselves competing not just with each other but with workers from related construction trades, all facing the same downturn.

The research shows that these workers have few escape routes. The occupations they typically transition to, other construction and extraction jobs, are also declining. Without retraining programs aimed at moving them into genuinely different fields, many could face long-term unemployment.

The Geographic Wildcard

The research operates at a national level, but the real world doesn't work that way. A national average of 633,000 new jobs at peak sounds manageable. Spread across 50 states and hundreds of millions of workers, it barely registers.

But clean energy jobs won't be spread evenly. Solar farms cluster in the sunny Southwest. Wind turbines dominate the Great Plains. Offshore wind is concentrated along coastal states. Meanwhile, coal jobs are concentrated in Appalachia and Wyoming. Natural gas extraction happens in Texas, Pennsylvania, and Louisiana.

A coal miner in West Virginia can't easily take a job installing solar panels in Arizona, even if they have transferable skills. Geographic mismatches compound skill mismatches. Communities that lose fossil fuel jobs might not gain renewable energy jobs. And communities gaining renewable jobs might not have enough workers with the right skills nearby.

The research acknowledges this limitation. The numbers presented are national averages. Local impacts will be far more severe in some places and barely noticeable in others. For policymakers, this means national strategies won't suffice. Targeted regional approaches are essential.

The Import and Export Wild Card

There's another crucial variable that could dramatically change these projections: where do we build the actual equipment?

The research's main scenario assumes that America maintains its current rate of importing solar panels, wind turbines, and other renewable energy equipment. But that could change. If American manufacturing becomes more competitive, we could produce more equipment domestically, creating additional jobs. If we become less competitive, we might import even more, reducing domestic employment.

The recently passed Inflation Reduction Act aims to boost American clean energy manufacturing through tax credits and other incentives. If successful, it could significantly increase the job numbers, particularly in manufacturing. The researchers tested scenarios where US manufacturing becomes more competitive, and the results were striking: the steady state phase could employ an additional 150,000 workers or more.

Conversely, if other countries, particularly China, continue to dominate solar panel and battery manufacturing, American employment could fall short of even the baseline projections.

There's also the export question. If the rest of the world follows America's lead and rapidly decarbonizes, demand for renewable energy equipment could explode globally. If American manufacturers can capture a share of that market, domestic jobs could multiply. The researchers tested a scenario where US exports double by 2030 and increase four to nine fold by 2040. In that optimistic scenario, the scale down phase becomes much less severe because factories keep running to meet global demand.

Putting the Numbers in Perspective

Before we sound too many alarm bells, let's put these numbers in context.

The total change of 685,000 jobs at the peak (633,000 gained plus 52,000 lost) represents just 0.4% of current US employment. For comparison, the American labor market typically sees about 5.9% of workers switch occupations every year. So in terms of overall labor market churn, the energy transition is actually a fairly small ripple.

Even the most affected industries, construction and manufacturing, are so large that the renewable energy boom represents a small fraction of their total activity. Construction laborers, for instance, work on everything from houses to highways to hospitals. The renewable energy transition creates a bump in demand, not a wholesale transformation of the industry.

This is actually good news in one sense: America's labor market is big and flexible enough to absorb these changes. We're not looking at economy-wide disruption.

But it's bad news in another sense: precisely because the changes are small in aggregate, they're easy to ignore at the national level. Politicians can point to overall employment numbers and declare victory. Meanwhile, specific communities and specific workers bear the brunt of concentrated job losses with little help.

What History Teaches Us

This isn't the first time a major infrastructure transition has created boom and bust employment cycles. The research points to historical parallels.

In 19th century Ireland, railroad construction employment soared to over 30,000 workers in 1847 during the "railway mania." Just two years later, in 1849, it had crashed back to 10,000 to 15,000, where it remained stable for years. The workers who flooded into railroad construction during the boom faced difficult adjustments when the boom ended.

More recently, BT Group in the UK announced major job cuts in 2023 after completing its fiber optic cable expansion. Union representatives called the cuts "no surprise" given that the major infrastructure project was finished. The workers knew the boom was temporary, but that didn't make the transition any easier.

These historical examples show that infrastructure booms naturally create temporary employment spikes. The pattern isn't new. What's new is our ability to predict it in advance and plan accordingly.

The Policy Imperative

So what should policymakers do with this information?

First, stop selling the energy transition as a simple story of green job creation. Yes, jobs will be created. But the story is complicated. Some jobs are permanent, some are temporary, and some workers will face genuine hardship. Honesty about these challenges builds trust and enables better planning.

Second, invest heavily in retraining programs, but target them carefully. Not all workers need the same help at the same time. During the scale up phase, the priority is training new workers for expanding fields like solar installation and wind turbine maintenance. During the scale down phase, the priority shifts to helping construction workers and manufacturers transition to other industries.

The research suggests these programs should pay special attention to the occupational mobility network. Don't just ask what skills workers have. Ask what jobs they typically move to and whether those jobs are also declining. If so, retraining needs to point toward genuinely different career paths.

Third, address geographic mismatches explicitly. Consider policies that either bring jobs to workers (incentivizing renewable energy projects in communities losing fossil fuel jobs) or help workers get to jobs (relocation assistance, remote work options for office jobs in the clean energy sector).

Fourth, use the power of procurement and industrial policy to influence the timing and location of the transition. If the federal government coordinates major renewable energy projects to avoid gaps between the scale up and scale down phases, or staggers projects across regions, it can smooth out some of the worst employment volatility.

Fifth, don't ignore the export opportunity. If American manufacturers can compete globally in clean energy equipment, the scale down phase becomes much less severe. The Inflation Reduction Act is a start, but more may be needed to ensure American competitiveness in global markets.

The Three Workers You Should Care About

Let's end by putting a human face on this. The research identifies three distinct worker profiles, each facing different challenges.

First, there's the fossil fuel worker. Maybe they're a coal plant operator or a natural gas extraction worker. They face consistent job losses throughout the transition. These workers need the most help, and they need it soon. Early retraining, job placement services, and income support during transitions are critical. The good news is there aren't that many of them: 52,000 jobs lost at peak. Targeted programs can make a real difference.

Second, there's the renewable energy specialist. Think solar panel installers and wind turbine technicians. These workers are in high demand throughout the transition and beyond. The challenge here is supply: we need to train a lot of them, fast. Apprenticeship programs, community college partnerships, and accelerated training initiatives should focus here.

Third, and most numerous, there's the temporary boom worker. Construction laborers, manufacturing workers, engineers working on renewable energy projects. These workers are essential for making the transition happen quickly, but their job security is an illusion. Come 2034, demand evaporates. These workers need honesty about what they're signing up for and support in planning their next career moves.

Imagine you're a young person in 2024 deciding on a career. Should you train as a wind turbine technician? Absolutely, if you want stable long-term employment in a growing field. Should you become a construction laborer specializing in renewable energy projects? Maybe, but go in with eyes open. You'll have great opportunities for a decade, but you'll need a plan B for 2035.

The Bigger Picture

Zoom out for a moment. This research is about jobs, but it's really about something bigger: how we manage large-scale societal transitions.

Climate change demands rapid transformation of our energy systems. The technology exists. The economics increasingly favor renewables. But technology and economics don't operate in a vacuum. Real people's livelihoods are at stake. Communities are built around energy industries. Skills take years to develop. Workers can't just be moved around like pieces on a chessboard.

The research shows we can achieve a 95% reduction in power sector emissions by 2035 without economy-wide disruption. The labor market can handle it. But "can handle it" at a national level masks real pain at local and individual levels.

The clean energy transition will happen. The only question is whether we manage it well or poorly. Managed well, with foresight and planning, it can create opportunities while supporting those who face losses. Managed poorly, it will slow the transition, and leave workers and communities behind.

This research gives us a roadmap. It tells us when and where the pressure points will be. It identifies which workers need help and when. It quantifies the scale of the challenge.

Now it's up to policymakers, employers, unions, and workers themselves to use that information wisely. The future doesn't have to be a rollercoaster that throws riders off at the peak. With proper planning, it can be a managed transition to a cleaner, more sustainable economy that brings workers along for the ride.

The Choice Before Us

Here's the bottom line: America can decarbonize its power sector rapidly without causing economic catastrophe. The numbers are manageable. The skills largely transfer. The opportunities are real.

But it won't happen automatically. It won't happen smoothly. And it won't happen fairly without deliberate intervention.

The research makes clear that treating the energy transition as a simple story of job creation versus job destruction misses the point entirely. It's a story of timing, location, and skill matching. It's about boom and bust cycles that are predictable and therefore preventable. It's about making sure the right workers are in the right places at the right times with the right skills.

We have a choice. We can acknowledge the complexity, plan for the challenges, and support workers through the transitions. Or we can ignore the warnings, pretend everything will work out fine, and then act surprised when communities collapse and workers struggle.

The research suggests the former is not only more humane but also more likely to succeed. A well-managed transition is a faster transition because it reduces political resistance and ensures the skilled workers are available when and where they're needed.

The clock is ticking. The decisions we make now about training programs, regional development, and industrial policy will determine whether the 2030s are remembered as a decade of opportunity or a decade of disruption.

The roadmap is clear. The path forward is visible. All that remains is the will to follow it.

Publication Details

Year of Publication: 2025
Journal: Joule
Publisher: Elsevier Inc.
DOI Link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joule.2024.12.004

Credit and Disclaimer

This article is based on original peer-reviewed research published in Joule. All findings, projections, and analytical frameworks presented here are derived from the original scholarly work. This article provides an accessible overview for general readership. For complete methodological details, comprehensive modeling assumptions, input-output analysis frameworks, network science metrics, sensitivity analyses, and full academic content, readers are strongly encouraged to access the original research article by clicking the DOI link above. All intellectual property rights belong to the original authors and publisher.