Bringing Labor Along for the Ride During Emissions Mitigation: A Case Study in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative

Abstract

This thesis aimed to answer the following question – what effect does membership in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, the first region-wide carbon pricing scheme in the United States, have on member states’ energy job markets? My hypothesis, based on my literature review and knowledge on the topic, was that RGGI membership would either be correlated with energy job gains, or would have an insignificant effect on the number of energy jobs in a state. To test this hypothesis, I constructed a simple OLS regression, using the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Occupational Employment (OES) Statistics, to judge whether the change in the number of energy jobs in a state from 2012 to 2019 correlated with RGGI membership. To that end, I included a number of control variables, including the trend in state unemployment over that time period and a measure of a state’s political leanings. I also conducted a second regression, which considered the RGGI states alongside an equal number of representative non-RGGI states. Ultimately, I found that RGGI membership was statistically insignificant in its correlation with the OES estimates. While this result was in line with my hypothesis, it does not allow for any detailed discussion of the coefficients at play. However, I did find one significant result in my first regression- for every one-point increase in a state’s lean toward Republicans, we would expect a state to lose 1.1 percentage points in energy jobs. This partisan gap in energy job trends is worthy of further study, especially given the partisan gap in appetite for climate action.