By Jan Witajewski-Baltvilks 2020 #Infra4Dev Conference: Decarbonizing Infrastructure www.worldbank.org/infra4dev2

1. Decarbonizing ENERGY: lighting Talks
Jan Witajewski-Baltvilks
University of Warsaw and
Centre for Climate and Energy analysis
Cost of TransiTion from The Workers’ PersPecTive

2. Intagrated Assessment Models 1.5C scenario:
phase-out of coal in OECD by 2040s
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
160
2005 2010 2020 2030 2040 2050 2060 2070 2080
EJ/year IMAGE SSP1 OECD
MESSAGE-GLOBIOM SSP2 OECD
REMIND-MAGPIE SSP5 OECD
IMAGE SSP1 World
MESSAGE-GLOBIOM SSP2 World
REMIND-MAGPIE SSP5 World

3. Age and education of workers
20% 20%
48% 43%
31%
32%
2% 5%
0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
Minning Polish Economy
60+
45-59
30-44
15-29
16%
33%
43%
39%
39%
25%
2% 3%
0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
Minning Polish Economy
Primary
Vocational
Secondary
Tertiary
Source: Statistics Poland, pooled BAEL 2015-2017

4. Why transition is costly?
• Given education, experience and education of miners, mining
sector gives them the highest payoff from all sectors in the
economy.
• Loosing a job implies that they need to move to their second-best
choice
• If they move to, say, manufacturing, on average they are less
productive than those who worked in manufacturing before

5. Wage distribution: mining vs. manufacturing
Source: computation based on Polish
Structure of Earnings Survey 2014

6. Role of policy makers
• Provide guidance:
• signal phase-out of coal early to manage expectations and prevent
invesment with no future
• Ensure that young workers leave mining early so they acquire skills in
growing and not declining sectors
• Acknowledge that transition to other sectors involve costs on the
side of workers and negotiate compensation.

7. acknowledgement
The research summarized in this presentation received funding from Project LIFE16
GIC/PL/000031 co-financed from EU funds from the LIFE program and from the funds
of the National Fund for Environmental Protection and Water Management, SONATA
grant by the National Science Centre, Poland, registration number
2016/21/D/HS4/02795 and from the European Union Horizon2020 under Grant
Agreement No 642260