Here’s what happens to workers when coal-fired power plants close. It isn’t good

Thu, 23 Nov 2023 19:43:39 +1100

Andrew Pam <xanni [at] glasswings.com.au>

Andrew Pam
<https://theconversation.com/heres-what-happens-to-workers-when-coal-fired-power-plants-close-it-isnt-good-215434>

"When Australia’s dirtiest coal-fired power plant, Hazelwood in Victoria,
closed in 2017, Australian authorities were blind to the collateral damage.

Closing a plant that accounted for a fair chunk of Australia’s greenhouse gas
emissions would help bring emissions down, but the costs to the displaced
workers were unknowable.

How many of them would lose income, and for how long? How many of them would
earn mere fractions of what they used to earn years into the future?

Twelve coal-fired plants closed between 2010 and 2020, and now a deep dive into
the tax records of workers in that industry provides us with the first
systematic insight into what happened.

The study we carried out for the e61 Institute along with colleague Lachlan
Vass examined taxation microdata to track the earnings trajectories of
Australians who received redundancy payments between 2010 and 2020 by industry.

Our study, published this morning, finds that on average across all industries
the workers made redundant earned around 43% less in the following year."

Cheers,
       *** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net               Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/                 Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/            Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/               Manager, Serious Cybernetics

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