Ensuring a Just Transition for Workers as Economies Shift from Carbon-Intensive to Low-Carbon Industries

This expert perspective by Tony Maher of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) discusses Australia's challenges in managing the transition from coal-fired power to low-carbon energy. It highlights the socio-economic risks to regional communities and describes a novel collaborative approach used during the closure of the Hazelwood power station to manage redundancies and redeployment across multiple private companies.

• Australia's power generation has historically been heavily dependent on coal, with over 80 percent of grid power sourced from black and brown coal until recently. Consequently, power generation accounts for approximately 35 percent of the country's annual greenhouse gas emissions, which totaled 545 million tonnes.
• The closure of coal power stations in Australia poses a severe risk to regional economies because these plants are located near coal fields rather than urban centers. These regions lack industrial diversification, and the loss of high-paying skilled jobs creates significant negative flow-on effects for local engineering, maintenance, and service industries.
• Past structural adjustments in Australia, including the privatization of power plants in the 1990s and the 2017 closure of the car industry, have been managed poorly. The author notes that roughly one-third of workers forcibly retrenched in major closures never find work with similar skill or pay, another third find less secure and lower-paid work, and the final third leave the workforce.
• The November 2016 announcement by Engie to close the 1,600 mW Hazelwood brown coal station provided only five months' notice, despite the plant providing 20 percent of Victoria's electricity and 5 percent of Australia's total supply. The closure affected approximately 750 direct employees and contractors.
• In response to the Hazelwood closure, the Victorian government and the CFMEU implemented a new negotiation model to reduce net job losses. This involved a special negotiator bringing together the government, the union, and multiple private companies (AGL, Energy Australia, and Engie) to offer redundancies to older workers and redeploy younger Hazelwood workers into vacancies at other stations.
• The CFMEU is advocating for the creation of a statutory agency mandated to manage the social impacts of the energy transition. This is proposed as a necessary alternative to relying on voluntary participation by private companies, drawing inspiration from the German model of eliminating forced retrenchments, although the author notes that Germany's single-company ownership structure is not currently achievable in Australia.

APA

Maher, T. (n.d.). Ensuring a Just Transition for Workers as Economies Shift from Carbon-Intensive to Low-Carbon Industries. World Resources Institute. https://wriorg.s3.amazonaws.com/expert-perspective-maher.pdf?_ga=2.107084294.525199009.1549850379-1752787116.1523286521

Chicago

Maher, Tony. Ensuring a Just Transition for Workers as Economies Shift from Carbon-Intensive to Low-Carbon Industries. World Resources Institute, n.d. https://wriorg.s3.amazonaws.com/expert-perspective-maher.pdf?_ga=2.107084294.525199009.1549850379-1752787116.1523286521.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Maher |first1=Tony |title=Ensuring a Just Transition for Workers as Economies Shift from Carbon-Intensive to Low-Carbon Industries |publisher=World Resources Institute |url=https://wriorg.s3.amazonaws.com/expert-perspective-maher.pdf?_ga=2.107084294.525199009.1549850379-1752787116.1523286521 |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{maherndensuring, author = {Maher, Tony}, title = {{Ensuring a Just Transition for Workers as Economies Shift from Carbon-Intensive to Low-Carbon Industries}}, institution = {World Resources Institute}, url = {https://wriorg.s3.amazonaws.com/expert-perspective-maher.pdf?_ga=2.107084294.525199009.1549850379-1752787116.1523286521}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }