Transition and the emergence of the eco- and energy precariat

With the emergence of the new green economy and the renewable energy sector, there is a growing risk of an energy precariat emerging in the social landscape. This risk is compounded by rising energy prices that cover the investment costs of large corporations in new technologies. Analyses at the intersection of human geography and energy research indicate the broad effect that of this phenomenon. It evidently affects workers employed by corporations that invest for profit rather than for the protection of people and the environment, particularly in the new energy technologies sector in both the Global South and the Global North (Stock and Sareen Reference Stock and Sareen2024). Beyond this, it also impacts the urban precariat, who, as consumers, cannot afford adequate thermal comfort and for whom rising energy prices pose a significant barrier to full participation in social life (Petrova Reference Petrova2018).

Renewable energy sources may help reduce emissions and protect the climate. However, they can also lead to reduced labour rights and lower working standards in these technologies when controlled by major players, especially if there is insufficient oversight from social and trade union organisations (Davidson Reference Davidson2023). Research has also identified a new segment of employees, the ‘environmental precariat’, a socio-economically diverse group of labourers that respond to the volatile demands of an ever-expanding environmental service-based economy (Neimark et al Reference Neimark, Mahanty, Dressler and Hicks2020).

The precarisation of labour affects new investments in wind energy and the development of photovoltaic farms. Alongside the formal labour market and established firms, an enormous informal space – particularly in the countries of the Global South – has emerged for the rise of ‘solar lumpenproletariat’. This space is composed of ‘informal and marginalised labourers that toil in precarious yet valuable nodes of solar development – resource mining, land acquisition for installation, and disposal as e-waste’ (Stock Reference Stock2021, 943). The unjust development of solar energy involves exploitation and the precarisation of work in panel installation. There is also a lack of transparent regulations about health risks in photovoltaic panel production (Stock and Sareen Reference Stock and Sareen2024) and in the mining of vital components used in solar PV (Sovacool Reference Sovacool2019).

The notion of the energy precariat refers not only to labour precarisation in the renewable energy sector and class-economic exploitation within the energy domain, but may also denote systemic exploitation at the intersection of environmental and political relations. It is probable that socio-ecological precarity embodies the convergence of overlapping crises. Thus, the conjunction of multiple crises – economic, environmental, and geopolitical – may reveal the crumbling infrastructures and the inadequate provision of care that are mechanisms reinforcing political injustice (Petrova Reference Petrova2023). Energy precarity can be reproduced or destabilised through social and material relations of housing, tenure, labour and infrastructure, as well as the formation of gendered and racialised energy subjects (Phillips and Petrova Reference Phillips and Petrova2021). Questions about the quality of work and job security or stability under ‘new climate capitalism’ generate concern and anxiety – particularly when the development of the renewable energy sector relies predominantly on public–private partnerships and international corporations (Rainnie et al Reference Rainnie, Snell and Dean2024).

Coal basins and the losers in the transition

The precarisation of social life is particularly visible in regions whose development and prosperity were previously dependent on extractive industries and coal-based energy. For instance, previous energy research has shown that low-carbon transitions and climate action can create their own victims, promote squalor over sustainability, and leave angry communities, disgruntled workers, and degraded landscapes in their wake (Sovacool Reference Sovacool2021). Moreover, precarisation affects young people in mining regions undergoing change as fossil fuel extraction is phased out. Comparative analysis of regions in India show that transitions typically entailed the need to engage in labour migration, while labour market liberalisation offered neither secure nor well-paid employment, only short-term and poorly remunerated jobs (Krommyda et al Reference Krommyda, Gourzis and Gialis2024).

Under conditions of decarbonisation and deindustrialisation, these traditional coal basins become ‘stranded communities’ (Atkins Reference Atkins2024), abandoned by both the state and capital. In such contexts, the employment landscape changes rapidly, and without adequate support, some workers and their families are forced into labour migration. The lack of alternative development paths in former coal basins leads not only to the precarisation of entire regions but also to broader social landscape changes: the dismantling of complex networks of social interdependence; the erosion of communities rooted in trade union and labour traditions; the disappearance of sites of social resistance; and the weakening of local communities active beyond the sphere of work. Energy resources, infrastructures, and the broader flows between energy and society affect the labour market (Bouzarovski Reference Bouzarovski2022a) and the overall social landscape. Although residents of former extractive regions are not homogeneous, risks of depopulation, unemployment, and susceptibility to right-wing populist tendencies are high. Overall, these areas are becoming marginalised in terms of the labour market, social capital, quality of life, and health conditions (Frantál et al Reference Frantál, Frajer, Martinát and Brisudová2022). The situation is particularly acute in mono-industrial regions that have pursued development strategies solely based on mining. Such towns and areas face the prospect of increased isolation and social exclusion during the coal phase-out (Jonek-Kowalska Reference Jonek-Kowalska2024). Miners’ fear of mine closures affects their perception of environmental threats and climate change – issues that are often neglected amid financial and employment pressures in energy-coal complexes, as well as concerns over future financial security (Żuk Reference Żuk2023a). Nostalgia for times when the coal industry and mining regions prospered indicates that coal can become a powerful cultural and political symbol, and thus a catalyst for ideological and political tensions (Mayer Reference Mayer2022). In this way, debates about the future of the coal industry may push miners and workers in the coal-energy sector towards right-wing populist actors. These actors treat discussions about the future of coal not as rational debates grounded in environmental, economic, or spatial policy arguments, but as opportunities to build political support through ideological divisions (Żuk et al Reference Żuk, Żuk and Pluciński2021). Countering the influence of the populist right in coal basins may lie in the stance of active trade unions defending broadly defined socio-economic living conditions of workers and their families – both in the workplace and beyond it (in places of residence) (Krishnan Reference Krishnan2026). This would entail broadening the just transition principles to include the right to a stable life and to development in harmony with nature and the principles of social justice, not only the right to retain well-paid employment.

The dead ends of the energy transition

Existing research indicates that workers in the extractive sector, where the risk of precarisation is widespread, expect assurances from national or regional authorities to uphold social agreements. There is also an expectation that authorities will create new employment opportunities, including within the renewable energy sector (Shibe and Gibbs Reference Shibe and Gibbs2025). A social dialogue involving trade unions could be a bridge in these efforts. Reducing the role of trade unions in the energy sector solely to the defence of jobs for dislocated workers appears to be an overly defensive and conservative strategy. In response to the phase out of coal, trade unions’ have an opportunity to perform a dual role. Trade unions will seek to protect workers’ security in the face of job losses or additional economic burdens, but this should also be seen as an opportunity to mobilise for greater social agency more broadly. It should also be understood as an opportunity for social transformations that ensure decent and more equitable work for all those affected by the costs of the energy transition. Although the goals of the energy transition are public and shared, its costs are often borne privately. Public support in the process of implementing a just transition should extend to diverse vulnerable groups and worker communities, not only those employed in the public sector or to members of trade unions. Not all workers are unionised, and collective agreements often do not cover those in precarious, casual, or informal employment (Luke Reference Luke2022).

In the Global South, if the transition is left solely in the hands of the state and large corporations, it may reinforce colonial dependencies. State-led energy policies have intensified territorial dispossession, militarisation, and socio-ecological degradation through the expansion of both fossil fuel and low-carbon projects. Tornel (Reference Tornel2025) has shown how outcomes facilitated and deepened the expropriation of indigenous and campesino territories in Mexico. Such findings suggest that a colonial-style energy transition does not improve the situation of local populations or it strengthen the position of marginalised peasants suffering from energy poverty. Rather, it can perpetuate socio-economic inequalities. In India, where Hindu nationalism discriminates against religious and ethnic minorities, solar coloniality perpetuates and compounds the harms of climate coloniality, mitigating carbon emissions through the landed extraction of photons and the dispossession of racialised peasants (Stock and Sovacool Reference Stock and Sovacool2023).

Institutions behind solar park development in India function as agents of dispossession. They typically employ administrative and non-economic methods through sub-national and local units of government, which seize peasant land for the state, as well as for private and financial firms seeking to develop solar installations. Modelled on Special Economic Zones (SEZ) and SEZ-like spaces (e.g. Special Investment Regions), solar parks are designed to be ‘business friendly’, maximising project investability and minimising investor risk (Stock and Birkenholtz Reference Stock and Birkenholtz2024).

Similar practices occur in African countries, where peasant land is expropriated in exchange for vague promises of employment in solar farms (Stock and Nyantakyi-Frimpong Reference Stock and Nyantakyi-Frimpong2024). This produces a paradox. Colonial-capitalist accumulation underpins the climate crisis yet also permeates new technological-energy solutions intended to mitigate the climate crisis, thereby reproducing historical economic inequalities and energy poverty. Profits and energy are largely transferred to other social groups, further reinforcing existing disparities.

Contestation of the energy transition and the rise of anti-ecological and anti-democratic right-wing populism

Climate policy and the manner in which the energy transition is implemented are mainly contested by far-right and right-wing populist parties (Kulin et al Reference Kulin, Johansson Sevä and Dunlap2021). However, it remains important to consider the class dimensions of attitudes towards energy policy. While in the Global South, the energy transition may reinforce colonial dependencies on core economies, in the Global North its costs can reproduce social inequalities, often borne disproportionately by working-class communities. Additional financial burdens – particularly fear of high energy prices, heating costs, energy poverty, transport exclusion, and limited access to organic food – generate anger and dissatisfaction among segments of the working class (Żuk and Żuk Reference Żuk and Żuk2024).

Without linking ecological policy to more egalitarian and just economic and social policies, promises of political protection against the costs of climate policy risk drawing working-class support toward the populist right. The absence of adequate social policy allows right-wing populists to portray energy transition and climate protection measures as another contrivance of ‘elites who do not understand real life’ promoting ‘ecology for the rich’ (Żuk and Żuk Reference Żuk and Żuk2024). This mechanism has already been observed in closing coal basins, which shifted from former strongholds of progressive trade unions and workers’ democracy to positions aligned with nationalist and conservative right-wing forces. As Kojola (Reference Kojola2018) has shown in Minnesota, these actors promise protection of jobs, the coal industry, and traditional ways of life. Such attitudes and outcomes may be partly due to the cautious approach trade unions have taken towards green transitions under neoliberal conditions, as well as towards potential new energy sources, tending instead to defend existing arrangements. This is especially the case in the energy and extractive sectors, where the impact of the transition on employment is greatest, such as in traditional mining regions in Germany (Kalt Reference Kalt2022). Consequently, some argue that the labour movement in Europe and the United States may act as a supporting force in various forms of ‘climate delay’ – ranging from openly questioning the objectives and rationale of the energy transition to adopting ‘hedging’ strategies that support the ecological modernisation paradigm of a green economy, but only within existing institutional parameters (Harry et al Reference Harry, Maltby and Szulecki2024).

However, opposition to climate policy and the energy transition is not limited to the working class. It also involves other sectors of popular classes, such as European farmers, who form open alliances with the populist right for these reasons (Mamonova and Franquesa Reference Mamonova and Franquesa2020; Van der Ploeg Reference Van der Ploeg2020). These groups may share a cultural-ideological backlash against climate policy with working-class circles, grounded in class-based anxieties about financial security, the cost of living, and perceived threats to their autonomy, dignity, and right to their own social space (Żuk Reference Żuk2025).

Energy web of life: energy transition and political critique against the exploitation of labour, society, and nature

To date, transformative practices have typically involved attempts to implement – or, in some cases, delay – low-emission solutions within existing capitalist frameworks through technological modernisation (Carroll Reference Carroll2020). It is clear, however, that this minimalist approach fails to address the root causes of the climate crisis, which extend far beyond any narrowly technocratic energy policy. The technological-modernising approach generally does not fundamentally alter the situation of those who bear the most tangible consequences of the environmental and economic crisis. Rather, the main costs of the energy transition fall upon them. These include broad segments of the working class, people living in peripheral and semi-peripheral countries, and victims of neoliberal transitions in both the Global South and North.

There is a need for a more autonomous, bottom-up, and decentralised transition, which introduces non-capitalist forms of everyday life in practice and links critiques of political economy with critiques of political ecology (Bouzarovski Reference Bouzarovski2022b). These counter-hegemonic practices are already visible in the social landscape, including civic initiatives and social movements defending energy-vulnerable groups and addressing energy affordability challenges (Stojilovska et al Reference Stojilovska, Yoon and Frankowski2024). In these actions, the presence and role of the labour and trade union movement are invaluable. Grassroots and self-governing actions by workers, using traditional strike methods, can influence the formulation of alternative production and transition plans that combine the defence of workers’ interests with environmental protection (Atkins Reference Atkins2023). This requires actions that go beyond the official models and strategies of the transition implemented by state and corporate alliances. Otherwise, there is a risk of mass layoffs in the traditional energy sector and resistance to the green transition (Lempinen et al Reference Lempinen, Parks and Korpikoski2025). As Dunlap and Tornel (Reference Dunlap and Tornel2023, 176) assert, ‘If there is such a thing as real energy transition, it will come from the pluriverse and post-development approaches emanating from civil society, autonomous and anarchist initiatives that will crosscut and include many other identity categories and cultures’. Under such circumstances, the climate crisis (Huber Reference Huber2022) and energy policy – including energy production models, technology choices, and methods of energy distribution and access – take on the character of a traditional class conflict.

As was shown above, challenges for energy autonomy and self-governing management of energy and labour are particularly acute in the Global South, where colonial and neoliberal practices have been implemented under the pretext of energy transition. Energy autonomy is understood broadly as local energy generation and use. It ensures self-sufficiency and enables stakeholders to determine their own energy provision in a sustainable, economically viable, and socially equitable manner (Juntunen and Martiskainen Reference Juntunen and Martiskainen2021), as in workers’ self-management. Energy autonomy rejects the paternalistic structures of liberal democracy, which organise social life through top-down practices of recognition (Tornel and Dunlap Reference Tornel and Dunlap2025). Capitalism, whether liberal or authoritarian, requires not only cheap nature but also cheap labour and cheap energy necessary for continued capital accumulation and the perpetuation of the capitalist system. Energy, more than ever, has profound economic and political significance for the future of the Earth, as well as for working conditions and the quality of life of the working classes and entire societies. In this context, environmental justice movements (such as the global Rights of Nature movement) and labour movements oriented towards greater social justice, can form joint platforms for socio-political action (Cortes-Vazques and Apostolopoulou Reference Cortes-Vazquez and Apostolopoulou2019).

If we accept the thesis that human organisations internalise and are internalised by the web of life (Moore Reference Moore2015), then, in the context of the energy transition, we may speak of an ‘energy web of life’ composed of complex socio-ecological-political interdependencies. These networks – shaped by local environmental conditions (natural resources, wind strength, solar irradiation and river networks) and by the prevailing economic, political, and legal systems – determine energy flows and shape collective life. The energy web of life may constrain or enhance the possibilities available to particular social groups or influence other dimensions of collective life, but may also be modified and reshaped through active and autonomous choices. The support for emancipatory or authoritarian tendencies, egalitarian or hierarchical social orders, and progressive or autocratic political projects rests on people, their attitudes, and their practices. The energy web of life resembles, to some extent, the historical, political, and economic circumstances described by Marx: we cannot choose the socio-historical conditions into which we are born, yet we can change them. The energy web of life affects our lives, but our practice and politics determine the configurations of the energy web of life.

Tensions between the goals of the energy transition and social justice emerge at both the local level, in the everyday lives of workers and working classes, and at the systemic level. Those seeking to addressing these tensions may draw inspiration from Marxist or anarchist (Sanubi and Nwador Reference Sanubi and Nwador2024) stateless forms of justice that combine civic and environmental care with an anti-capitalist strategy (Downes Reference Downes2025). They may also build on eco-socialist traditions that critique the forces of contemporary global capitalism. In all cases, it is crucial that these perspectives transcend national borders and avoid the pitfalls of energy nationalism (Żuk et al Reference Żuk, Conversi and Żuk2024). Climate, energy resources, and energy flows know no national boundaries and cannot be addressed solely through domestic policy. While recognising local specificities, future solutions should be formulated from a cosmopolitan, transnational, and planetary perspective. Just as it is impossible to block the forces of supranational capital within a single country (Worth Reference Worth2023), so too is it impossible to achieve effective climate policy and a just energy transition in one country alone.

From green transition to systemic change

This Themed Collection entitled ‘Green Transition or Social Transformation? Socio-economic Costs and Challenges of Energy Transition for Working People’ invites further study of the role of labour in the energy transition and its impact on workers’ lives. Above all, it raises fundamental questions about the emerging trajectory, aims, and scope of the transition. It also suggests that it is worth speaking openly not only about technological change but also about systemic change – one that incorporates economic and political dimensions and arguably must accompany the energy revolution. This is because a transition that leaves hierarchical social structures intact fails to critique the economic mechanisms that exploit people and the environment, or neglects to challenge existing relations of power that colonise nature and the working classes is not a transition at all. It is merely ‘old wine in new bottles’, designed to ensure the further reproduction of the prevailing system and to create new forms of capital accumulation. If we speak of planetary justice (Kalfagianni et al Reference Kalfagianni, Pedersen and Stevis2024; Pedersen et al Reference Pedersen, Stevis and Kalfagianni2024), we must also consider planetary responsibility and planetary solidarity, which transcend the artificial administrative boundaries to which states have been reduced in the era of neoliberal capitalism. There must also be social actors capable of defending labour rights and resisting the exploitation of both nature and human beings at supra-national and supra-state levels – an environmental and planetary proletariat (Moore Reference Moore2025) commensurate with the challenges of the twenty-first century. In this sense, an autonomous green transition serves as a prelude to new social policies, a critique of political economy, and an indictment of a political order that is unjust to both people and nature.

The contributors address these challenges and draw attention to issues often overlooked in mainstream media and political debates – namely, the entanglement of energy and environmental transition in broader political contexts, social policy, and workers’ struggles.

In her article, Karen Bell proposes the concept of a ‘transformative just transition’, explicitly calling to link climate policy with a redistribution of income and wealth (Bell Reference Bell2025). In practice, this would mean reducing the ecological footprint according to class position. The wealthiest sectors of society, whose high levels of consumption generate the greatest emissions and exert the most significant impact on climate change, would be required to radically limit their contribution to global warming through various mechanisms, such as climate reparations, progressive environmental taxation. Such measures could reduce social inequalities, ensure more equitable access to resources (healthy food, sustainable transport, better working and living conditions), and help diminish carbon inequality. In all these processes, trade unions possess considerable political and mobilising potential, as their members generally show greater support for redistributive solutions and mechanisms.

Unfortunately, the mobilisation and political potential of trade unions in different parts of the world have remained underutilised in the just transition process. According to Nora Räthzel (Reference Räthzel2025), trade unions have tended to focus primarily on defending jobs rather than pursuing a holistic transformation of quality of life. Moreover, in trade union politics, the global ecological crisis is reduced solely to climate change. Trade union strategies also remain confined within the boundaries of nation-states. Yet workers experience the current situation not merely as a climate crisis, but as a multi-crisis of the system in which they live. Their sense of dissonance between the world they inhabit and the world they would like to inhabit is immense, producing growing alienation. Therefore, when speaking of a socio-ecological crisis, one must also speak of a comprehensive socio-political-environmental transformation. Workers’ recurring demands include democratisation, collectivity, global connections, a decrease in salaried work, and growth in general. Critically assessing current trade union strategies, which tend to take the form of adaptive responses to challenges overwhelming us from all sides, Nora Räthzel (Reference Räthzel2025) argues that ‘unions can connect to workers’ desires for a different way of life and translate them into just transition policies that deserve this name’. This echoes the call for a ‘revolution of everyday life’ proclaimed by the Situationists in the 1960s (Vaneigem Reference Vaneigem2001), which on the one hand can challenge the existing order and, on the other, enables workers and various social groups crushed by the current economic-political system to follow desires and dreams of a different, better world.

Francesco Laruffa and Bénédicte Zimmermann (Reference Laruffa and Zimmermann2025) outline possible and desirable frameworks for just transition policies and propose an analytical framework linking various models of transition with different dimensions of justice. They distinguish two ideal types of transition that may be understood as forming a continuum. The first is a growth-driven conception of sustainable development – rejected by the authors – which treats the ecological crisis mainly in depoliticised terms as a market failure and locates reformist action in market-regulated technological change supported by the state. The second is social–ecological development, which entails a transformative process oriented towards the well-being of humans and other living species, while respecting the biophysical limits of the planet (Laruffa and Zimmermann Reference Laruffa and Zimmermann2025). The authors relate social–ecological development to seven interrelated dimensions of justice (distributive, epistemic, restorative, planetary, intergenerational, ecological, and procedural). Using the capability approach, they integrate these dimensions into a single coherent framework. The capability approach, which makes democratic participation the means of integrating potentially conflicting conceptions of justice and development, leads the authors to the conclusion that implementing ecological justice in social practice requires deepening democratic participation.

Brendan Davidson (Reference Davidson2025) addresses a gap in research by analysing how the renewable energy technology sector affects labour regimes, the character of work, and workers’ conditions. The current development of wind energy and labour processes associated with wind energy in the ‘main’ spheres of production (manufacture, project development, and operations and maintenance) are internally related and conditioned by capitals-in-competition. Drawing on an analysis of conditions in the United States wind energy sector, the author advances the thesis that, despite technological changes and shifts in the character of work, capital reproduction and workplace power relations continue to persist. The specific nature of work in the wind energy sector (mobility, distance from home) renders it particularly susceptible to labour precarity and worker exploitation, further reinforced by barriers to unionisation. An additional obstacle to changing working conditions is the ‘hegemonic common sense’ that governs social relations in the day-to-day rhythms of life. This suggests that opportunities for change lie in disrupting the reproduction of existing relations between macro-structural economic conditions and workplace practice in the wind energy sector. Refusing to participate in the consolidation of precarious practices, however, requires everyday social resistance. The dominance of capitalist logic in the wind energy sector thus constitutes yet another argument for closer cooperation between the ecological movement and labour communities, which could alter the development trajectory of the renewable energy sector.

Tensions between the assumptions of the green transition and the realities of workers’ everyday lives are particularly visible in countries of the Global South. Benjamin Velasco (Reference Velasco2025) presents case studies concerning the national single-use plastic ban in the Philippines and its perception by workers, as well as analysing its impact on employment. Workers’ awareness of environmental threats often conflicts with concerns about their own jobs and economic security. However, the possibility of finding alternative employment and sources of income facilitates acceptance of environmental policy implementation. Interviews indicate that workers expect active support from both government and company management. As usual, without social pressure and cooperation between the ecological movement and trade unions, political establishments at both the state level and workplace management are neither willing nor prepared to provide extensive support programmes for workers.

Finally, the article by Dimitris Stevis, Nora Räthzel, David Uzzell and Linda Clarke (Reference Stevis, Räthzel, Uzzell and Clarke2025) offers a strong synthesis of the reflections contained in this Themed Collection. The authors provide a historical overview of labour environmentalism while also outlining future directions for environmental labour studies. They argue that labour environmentalism should take into account the inseparable relationship between labour and nature, expand the scope of work and workers, and address global divisions of labour. Recognising this close relationship, the authors demonstrate that the two environments – the workplace and the environment in a broader sense – are inseparable in social practice. These include the environments directly experienced at work and in the everyday lives of communities, as well as the broader environment, which functions as the life-support system of humans and non-human species and may not be directly experienced in daily work or life: climate, soil, groundwater, oceans, and biodiversity. This implies that analysis, research, and the construction of desirable policy models cannot focus solely on artificially separated occupational activity, but must encompass the totality of social relations and human activity.

All the articles presented in the collection are interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary in character. They demonstrate that the framework of a genuine just transition is fluid and multidimensional, and that it is therefore more appropriate to speak of ecological social transformations – understood as a stream of interconnected social changes – rather than to analyse isolated mechanisms detached from their broader economic, political, and environmental contexts. This process transcends the boundaries of nation-states and will shape the global social order over the coming decades. While this process continues, all outcomes remain possible – threats to democracy, working conditions, political freedom, and environmental integrity may intensify or abate. Ultimately, the direction of change depends on people’s attitudes and social engagement; our present choices, analyses, commitments, and daily practices shape the conditions in which we live and those that future generations will inherit.