What is an employment carbon footprint?

employment carbon footprint (noun)

A metric to assess which U.S. counties will be hardest hit by job losses and economic displacement in the transition to clean energy.

As the U.S. moves away from fossil fuels, the 2022 U.S. Inflation Reduction Act has targeted county-level aid to workers in carbon-intensive industries whose jobs will be at risk. But new research shows that the act leaves behind counties that consume high levels of fossil fuels for activities such as heavy equipment, machinery, and industrial metal manufacturing.

To remedy that oversight, MIT Sloan professor Christopher Knittel and graduate researcher Kailin Graham developed a new metric of employment vulnerability to the energy transition, the “employment carbon footprint,” which captures county-level reliance of U.S. jobs on fossil fuels for both fossil fuel production and consumption.

The pair measured the carbon intensity of U.S. jobs within eight major sectors, then calculated the reach of those industries across every aspect of a community to deliver a more nuanced picture of employment vulnerability across the nation.

Policymakers can use this data to better determine which energy-impacted communities will need assistance in the energy transition, the authors write.

Use the Employment Vulnerabillity to the Energy Transition Tool