This transcript is from a CSIS podcast published on April 29, 2024. Listen to the podcast here.
Neelima Jain: It's really not just about transitioning away, it's also about transitioning within. How do we make our existing energy systems robust, more community oriented? At the end of the day, our goal is to make sure that our economy is global, is sustainable, is shared by everyone across the globe, and ensure that we safeguard our communities and workers.
Lisa Hyland: Hello and Welcome to Energy 360 from the CSIS Energy Security and Climate Change Program. I’m your host, Lisa Hyland.
This week, program director Joseph Majkut talks just transitions with Sandeep Pai, Neelima Jain, and Pradip Swarnakar about how just transition fits into energy transitions.
Over the past 2 years, the CSIS Energy Program worked on the global just transition project, which aimed to build a peer-to-peer network between South Africa, India, and the United States to facilitate knowledge sharing and learning from each other's experiences. The project emphasizes the importance of sub-national engagement across the 3 countries and the need to involve local actors in the planning and implementation of transition strategies. Our discussions with local leaders highlighted the significance of economic diversification and community engagement in achieving a successful and inclusive transition.
As the project wraps up, we caught up with Sandeep, Neelima, and Pradip to get their thoughts on how these issues have changed over the past 2 years and lessons learned for moving forward.
Here’s Joseph to kick off the conversation.
Joseph Majkut: Welcome, Pradip, Sandeep, and Neelima. I'm very excited to speak with you today. Sandeep, you started the Global Just Transition Network project for CSIS. Can you talk me through a little bit how you came to conceive of the project? What was going on at the time in just transitions in India, and elsewhere around the world, that made us think that this particular approach was important?
Sandeep Pai: At that time, this was a fairly new topic, in the sense of that people had started thinking about, what does just transition mean? What are the different challenges? Who's going to be impacted? There's been some good studies on that front.
But what I found was missing is all these conversations were happening in isolation, and these conversations were not interacting with each other. So, a state in U.S. could be doing its own just transition planning, it may have its own task force, it may be talking to unions, but at that time, most of the people, if you go and talk to anybody in rural West Virginia or in Jharkhand, they didn't know that this is a universal problem. They thought that this is a problem that they are facing or will face, but not necessarily that this is a systemic problem, this is something that is going to grow across the world as energy transition accelerates, because there will be lots of winners and there will be lots of losers. And so people didn't realize that, we don't need to reinvent the wheels. There are places that have already experienced this, they may be ten years ahead of us, whether they have done the right thing or they have done the wrong thing, whether there's something to learn or whether... Something to learn from mistakes or best practices.
So this kind of network or understanding that global players didn't have, global actors, especially at the sub-national level, didn't have that. There are opportunities to learn and not reinvent the wheels on very specific topics, whether it's skill development, whether it's about economic diversification, whether it's about repurposing, there's lots of things happening on this around the world.
So that was how it was conceived. At the same time, why we had chosen India and the coal industry in India, so there were two parts to this work. One part was to build a peer-to-peer network between South Africa, India, and U.S., the sub-national government stakeholders and other stakeholders in these countries, especially those working on just transition. And the second part was to double down on the coal industry in India, and almost in some ways sensitize them about the idea of just transition.
Joseph Majkut: A couple years ago, I felt like there was a lot of buzz. At COP we saw negotiations around just transition partnerships, that the developed countries in the West were going to partner with coal-heavy countries around the world. For South Africa, Indonesia, there was always a rumor about such a partnership with India. And it feels like those haven't taken off. And I know we've done a lot of research that I think is informative to how we're actually going to achieve a just transition. Maybe, Neelima, what is your sense of where the global conversation is today?
Neelima Jain: Well, thanks for having me, Joseph. I have to say that my view is very limited to the three countries that we spoke to during our project, India, South Africa, and United States. And because just transition is such an inward-looking process, it's very difficult to assess a global landscape where I stand today. I'm looking at it from a very... Just being curious about just transition. And the three countries that we picked for this project were at a different point along the learning curve when it comes to implementing or planning for just transition. And especially India and South Africa, they need a plan on just transition when led by their developmental needs. India is a rapidly growing economy, and it has very ambitious renewable energy targets, but it continues to emphasize on ensuring energy security and providing affordable energy access, but it is yet to initiate its transition away from coal. It's in the process of adding a lot more energy, and in a sustainable and economic way, but transition away from coal is yet to happen.
Joseph Majkut: So what's your take on the just transition agenda now? How has the perception of just transitions changed in the time that we've been working on this?
Sandeep Pai: So, one big shift that I have seen is that, like you said, the boundaries of where the conversations are happening have moved. It used to be a very multilateral, large, federal government level, international organization level conversation, a few years ago. That's where, when we started the sub-national initiative, it was quite unique. But now it has actually spatially gone even one level down, and now people are saying even sub-national is not enough. It is very regional, within a state itself.
So I will take examples. For example, if you think about West Virginia, it's really about Southern West Virginia, not Northern West Virginia. So it's about specific counties in Wyoming, it's about specific districts in India, it's about specific... So now I increasingly see that the work that was happening at sub-national level, there's more and more effort to bring now counties and districts together, because that's where the actual implementation of this is going to happen. If you think about it in any government, any country, at least I can speak about United States and India, the federal government creates policies and provides provisions of finance of different kinds, whether it's the IRA or whether it's through different mechanisms, and the states play an active role of implementation. But the actual implementation, the site level, project level implementation has to be done at a county level. But it's truly like the capacity of local actors is where it's the next frontier of this work, and I see some of that work starting to happen.
Joseph Majkut: So why is it important that we start thinking about just transition in the context of a country like India where... I agree, when we're on the ground, we talk to officials, scholars, analysts, and everyone says this is a future issue, but why is it important that we start thinking about what just transition, or scholars start thinking about what just transitions look like now?
Neelima Jain: Because planning is important. I mean, if you... And planning takes... Let's look at the countries who have begun just transition. We cannot confidently say today that anybody has finished transition, so that planning has taken 15, 20 years. Research shows that it will take, if you want to look at an effective just transition rollout, it will take 15 to 20 years of comprehensive holistic planning. And that's why for countries like India, it's important that we start the conversation now.
Joseph Majkut: So then, you mentioned that the other countries that were in our purview might have been further along. What lessons do we learn? I mean, the hypothesis of a lot of this project has been that the district managers or state officials in India, or coal country in South Africa, or coal country in the United States, oftentimes have more in common in terms of outlook, concerns, than do national policymakers from those same countries. So how should we think about learning and the opportunity for that sub-national exchange of views? Or how should we think about the exchange of views at the sub-national level, and how that can help inform the planning, which seems so important, even if it's prospective at this time?
Neelima Jain: That's a great question, Joseph. So I think what struck me and the entire team was really the similarities, despite the differences in the context among these three regions. And the similarities were really regarding ensuring reliable, affordable energy. Despite the economic context, be it the U.S., South Africa, or India, ensuring reliable, affordable energy was of prime importance. And then communicating transition. There are so many issues about communication, the narrative, and that's why there is such debate about what is just transition, how do we define just transition? So communicating transition issues effectively to the stakeholders.
And just the financial, the political constraints, the capacity constraints in managing transition, that as well were common across all geographies. And as I mentioned earlier, just transition is a very localized, inward-facing process. But because the concept itself is so new, it really underscores the value of collaboration, and I think platforms like this where exchanges could happen, where models of success could be shared, it really... Because it's such a new concept, it underlines the importance of exchanging ideas, and just helping these just transition partners exchange strategies, policies, challenges, and just help each other in these transitions. This was the biggest lesson, that they need to continue to talk to each other, despite the different contexts.
Joseph Majkut: Pradip, I'd love to return to you. You and your colleagues at the Just Transition Research Center have spent a lot of time looking at just transition concepts in India, how the just transition is thought about, conceived. What is your view on the individual nature or the local nature of a just transition, and then how regional or sub-national groups can really help learn from each other, despite their needs for local solutions?
Pradip Swarnakar: Right. So, just transitions have various layers, and before talking about India, we have to understand the international context, because it's not started from local level. It is now being dealt with at local level, but it started from the international level. So the agenda setting started with the COPs, from the Paris to Glasgow, and also to the last COP, and where we can see people are talking about just transition. So exactly how just transition is different from all other climate related issues, or CBDR and all other justice related questions, like common but differentiated responsibility, people are talking about this kind of things, this kind of international justice who will pay, historical responsibility, this kind of stuff. But the question of just transition is that there is a premise is that no-one left behind.
So when we are talking about all-inclusive transitions, it's not about that, if you are doing something for... If there there's 100 people and we are doing something for 30 people, 40 people, that our project is done or our things are achieved. So when we are talking about including all the 100, this is a question of scale, and when its a question of scale, and when we are in a country like India or China, where the population is very high, and they are very interconnected, and density of this coal region, that is why the local comes into play. And that comes into play through the national and the sub-national government.
So we have to understand these layers, like the international agenda setting and the national understanding of these things, and also the sub-national, and finally the local government's thing. So when you look at other countries, we can definitely learn something like, okay, how they have done in 20, 30 years. But in case of India, things are complicated because we do not have a set of data, and we do not have a proper understanding who is going to benefit and who is going to lose in this entire transition process.
Joseph Majkut: Well, let me take a pause and just gut check this conversation for a moment. India specifically, 7% annual economic growth rate, large diversifying economy, but a lot of people that need to be brought out of poverty. Pradip, I'd love your thoughts on, why are we even talking about just transition? India's got really strong plans for renewables, but is an energy-hungry, growing country. Is it important to talk about just transition now? And how do you even conceive of just transition when the transitions that India is undergoing are very different than countries in the developed West, as an example?
Pradip Swarnakar: When you're talking about where these renewables are coming, they are coming into different geographies of the country. So people who are associated with their jobs and related things, like southern part of India or western part of India, and fossil fuel dependence like coal is actually in the eastern part of the India, some central part of the India. So this is not matching in terms of because when the state government comes into play in terms of revenue, in terms of job, the one state government is actually not helping out, because of these two different kind of energy system or energy sources are coming. Nationally we see that can actually help when we are talking about renewable, but when we are talking about very specific sub-national or very local level, that is not going to help. And that is why we need to talk about just transition or question of justice, like the sub-national level justice or the local level justice. So then we are talking about just transition. That's the most important.
Joseph Majkut: I really appreciate that example. One of the things that my own experience of participating in these workshops and being in India as part of this research project was that there's so many conversations. It's easy from the U.S. view to look at India as a whole mass, but you would commit the same mistake that anybody looking at the U.S. from abroad would say, "Well, the U.S. just has one thing happening." Whereas if you're more familiar with our federalist system and the way energy policies are devised, the way industries are distributed, that there are much richer stories underlying the national statistics.
And that actually gets me to some of the details that we discovered. We ended up having a lot of rich conversations with state-level leaders, folks who've committed effort into just transition. Neelima, what were some of the innovative strategies that you saw rise from the conversations and really catch everyone's attention?
Neelima Jain: Yeah, Joseph, there are many, but let me just pick a few. As we went through the conversations, we understood that the community engagement and communication, it was such a common approach and issue and concern that came up multiple times across different conversations. So we cannot really always take the critical role that community engagement and communication play in effective planning of just transition. And the workshop did highlight some of the nuanced approaches to ensure that there is community buy-in, so engaging with communities and their native language, and taking into account culture and logistical consideration. It's so obvious, but perhaps not as much. South Africa for example is largely an English-speaking country, but has so many native languages. And I think what was apparent from our conversation with the presidential commission was that engaging with the communities in their native languages made a huge difference.
Then emphasizing terms such as energy diversity and economic diversification, rather than just transition, that just resonates so much more with locals, and just gives them a sense of renewed purpose. Also, there were a few regulatory tools that were highlighted in the workshop. For example, the State of Minnesota integrates community participation in its integrated resource planning, and offers a 15-year window for transition preparation. Now, what this has done is that this has led to communities working very closely with the state, with the electric utilities to develop renewable energy projects, to invest in infrastructure, to diversify tax bases. The other example, again going back to the Presidential Climate Commission in South Africa, I think the way they just built the entire economic level planning, they made sure that there is involvement of academia, industry, and government research institutions, just so that they could account for diverse perspectives and make that economic level planning very comprehensive.
Joseph Majkut: Sandeep, you have also been on the ground with lots of state and local leaders. What innovations are you seeing?
Sandeep Pai: So, Campbell County in Wyoming, where I spent a few weeks this year, I have not seen a county like that. I mean, it's a county where almost every elected representatives, from mayors to county commissioners to... And this is very bipartisan, so that makes it even more fascinating. And various other elected representatives and community bodies, they are very ahead of the game. While this is a county that is the energy capital of the U.S., it used to produce 400 million tons, which is almost half of U.S. coal coming from one county. The production has halved, so it's now producing 200 million tons.
So in other places, my experience has been that they're still thinking that the coal economy will revive, and it may come back, or they've already migrated. This is a community which actually historically has used a lot of money from the coal production to actually do a lot of community welfare and community development and economic development. So they are very well placed to attract a lot of sectors.
So I'm just going to tell you what that community is planning. What they're planning is they're planning an investor meet. This is almost unheard of. This is an investor meet to invite investors from around the world to this county, to say that here's ten options for you. You can invest from things like CCS to coal to products to solar to wind to all sorts of things. So in September this year they're going to do an investor meet. This is historic, and I have never heard of this anywhere in the world. And for a county of that kind of coal... Where there's such a big coal ecosystem, even today, it's very historic. I mean, I think if this model is successful, we could replicate it everywhere, to do these kinds of investor meets at local level, to showcase investor what you can offer in terms of investments and things like that. So that's... Again, like I said, it's an ongoing example, so we'll see, but it's a good start.
Joseph Majkut: If I can jump in, one of the things I came to realize or came to believe over the course of this research, and Pradip, I'd love your thoughts on this, is that just transition is often consigned to an energy conversation. It's a concept that energy and climate people are concerned with, because of equity and access issues, but it seems to me the conversation is really actually so much more. It touches on economic development and diversification. Do we think too narrowly when we're talking about just transition in the context of how you actually diversify an economy, how you provide support for a community undergoing transition, whether that's driven by changes in the marketplace or changes in government policy with respect to climate change?
Pradip Swarnakar: So when you have... I understand this is for energy system changes, which is huge, and the number is high. But if the system is already stable, then there is not like this... If this is a shock, the system can take this shock because the system is already stable, in terms of including everyone into the system. But when you are looking at the existing energy system like a coal-dependent economy or something like that, already there are inequalities and problems, informalities or something like that.
So one way that should be not like... They should not be increasing of these things when they'll be moving or phasing down of this fossil fuel. And another way when we have installations of renewables, as Neelima was rightly pointing out, the community engagement is important. Because when we have installed these fossil fuel based things, the community engagement was not enough. So we have an opportunity to have a more inclusive policymaking when we are installing renewables. So it's not about coal, it's not about energy, but it's about the entire economic system. And this is a very important point very few people are making, you rightly pointed out. If the system is stable, then if whatever transition is there, it will take the shock. But if system is not that much stable, then we need to fix it out from various angles like national and sub-national.
Joseph Majkut: Neelima, I'd love your thoughts on that question as well.
Neelima Jain: Yes, Joseph, that's a great question, and I would completely agree with Pradip. It's really not just about transitioning away, it's also about transitioning within. How do we make our existing energy systems robust, more community oriented? At the end of the day, our goal is to make sure that our economy is global, is sustainable, is shared by everyone across the globe, and ensure that we safeguard our communities and workers, and we are not building a new future at the cost of the workers and the communities. And hence it's so important that, instead of just talking about transitioning away from one fuel to the other, we make our existing systems stronger and more holistic.
Joseph Majkut: And we saw some examples here, right? Because navigating the economic development story with the energy transition that is attempting to be done to meet the risks of climate change, we do return to energy at several points. And one of the things we heard about was efforts to incentivize industry to develop cleaner energy inputs, but allow them to maintain competitiveness. For instance, the state of Telangana compensate industries that adopt cleaner energy sources in moving away from coal. How does that help balance any additional costs they might see? How does that inform competitiveness? And how does it build long-term economic competitiveness?
Sandeep Pai: Yeah, so I mean there are so many examples. It's almost like an extension of the sub-national work, but even at a project manager implementation level, if I can say at that scale. So let's think about how places can diversify, how, whether it's Fayette County in West Virginia, whether it's Ram and Chaka, whether it's some local district in South Africa or anywhere in the world. The central question for just transition, there is no silver bullet. It's a very multidisciplinary topic, but if I can boil it down to one question, it's like how do this places diversify? All the skilling repurposing, they can all come under it under this larger question of what are the new sectors that these places can get into? How do they diversify their economy? What would be the role of clean energy in that?
Neelima Jain: At the end of the day, climate action for its own sake is not enough to inspire change in many places. If you create economic incentives to states and localities, you can empower them to address climate change and provide them a future in the transition. And we have seen this multiple times in the U.S., in the UK, the shift from coal to gas was not... The driver was not climate, the driver was more economic. So really, if we create demonstrable successful projects, policies that are essential to building resilient economies, we will get political will and political support, which is crucial.
Joseph Majkut: Neelima, part of... I think implicit in your answer is that, for a lot of the places where just transition actually needs to be articulated, you have concentrated community needs. These are communities, they're regions, oftentimes in places there's some sort of ethnic or tribal structure that exists and is important. How does giving a sense of opportunity and pride, which is a political and a social question, actually help? And did you see that issue arise in your conversations? And is it as important as things like the economic and technocratic analysis and thinking that we are accustomed to doing?
Neelima Jain: Absolutely. I don't think any other incentive than an economic incentive drives communities, governments, sub-national governments or national governments, towards reaching that minimum scale. We have seen that happening in several subjects, several sectors. So even in our conversations, the economic incentive was far more emphasized than any other, and largely because you build resilient economies, and then as a result of which you build resilient communities. Also not mono-economies, they have to be diversified economy. Resilience also has... We need to perhaps come up with a definition of resilience as well, in the context of just transition.
I think a few things that struck me... We were talking to this very innovative social enterprise which is based out of West Virginia, and given the history and the legacy of coal in West Virginia, the enterprise just marvels in incubating social enterprises within the communities. And that just allows... Just embracing that entrepreneurial spirit of local communities can just help drive the transition, get them buying from the communities, which is very important for building comprehensive policies. I think treating social enterprises as a first and economic research and development that demands flexibility, experimentation, willingness to learn from failures, is so crucial for economies like India and South Africa, and I guess perhaps regions like West Virginia as well. So, absolutely economic incentives will drive the effort of just transition much farther than any other narrative, but built on resilience, built on community resilience.
Joseph Majkut: I'd like to go back to the large scale. So we've learned through this research exercise how essential sub-national decision-makers are, because they actually have to articulate just transition. We've learned that there actually is a real opportunity for cross-border learning at the sub-national level, just because the concerns of a state policymaker or regional authority are different from the national level. But if we think about the next 30 years, and the world trying to make an energy transition consistent with the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement, we seem to need to build an infrastructure that will provide funding, support for just transition, that can filter down and be utilized in communities where what particular mix of solutions is going to work has to be determined locally. When you think about that need, what is the next step?
Neelima Jain: So Joseph, I think the next step is to continue these conversations in parallel, both at the sub-national level and national level. Because my sense is, when this experimentation and learning at the sub-national level is integrated with local and federal policymaking, that will enable convergence. Of course it will bring strong sub-national institutions, but it will also soften the domestic political constraints, which is what is important, just softening that political will.
And I think as long as we continue to put efforts into making this platform, or a network of these leaders, where they are nimbly able to share these common challenges and contextually appropriate solutions, as long as we continue to strengthen this vehicle, this powerful vehicle, I think we will do perhaps... I'm not suggesting that we will make a dent in the overall just transition policymaking or efforts, but at least we will be able to continue to engage and implant these policy ideas that are required across the developing and the developed world through this platform. So I think we as CSO, as a think tank, as a policy research organization, our collective efforts should be about strengthening these exchange platforms and allowing these exchange of ideas, so that that in turn strengthens the systemic abilities of sub-national and national institutions.
Joseph Majkut: Pradip, I know you have a whole research agenda in this front, so...
Pradip Swarnakar: Okay. No, I will just briefly talk about one important thing. When we are thinking about very long-term scenario, like 30 years, and when the present policymakers will not be there, we'll not be there, so other people will be replaced by this, but what is the agenda, how we can see? And what will be the focus on this when you're talking about very macro level policymaking?
I think we should also think about the role of technology, because all the critical social issues and energy issues and climate issues, the role of technology is very important. Because whenever we will have some crisis, like we have seen the COVID or war or something like that in between, we go back to our comfort zone, and here comfort zone is that coal. We have coal, we can extract coal, we have thermal power plants to generate electricity, but we are moving to a new system which is going to take some time to get stable. But always there is fallback is on this fossil fuel.
So technology plays an important role, not only the newer technologies like the hydrogen or geothermal or something like that, but the technology because the government of India also investing a lot on working on the coal gasification, carbon capture, CCUS, and all these things, so even using some of the coal but with very less emissions, or how to absorb those emissions, or how to do certain other technological development. So the future is on the new renewable technology, but also some of the technology which can make this coal or fossil fuel more efficient. And this should be the future, because without technology, we cannot go for this kind of transition and economic development. So we need to explore more, both the fronts, on renewable front and also how to deal with the existing fossil fuel front.
Joseph Majkut: I'm very grateful that we've got to do all this work together, and that we have a lot of work future to do, and that you joined us today. Have I left anything on the table that either of you need to share about this project, or just transitions, and how we're going to achieve them?
Neelima Jain: I think one last message that I really have for everyone who is involved in just transition efforts is focusing on the emphasis of planning, that planning has to begin now in several emerging economies. And planning in terms of economic diversification, because economic diversification takes a very, very long time, and it is important that we plan now.
Joseph Majkut: Sandeep, I'd like to get your final thoughts on the just transition network. After more than two years since this project launched, where have you seen success?
Sandeep Pai: So I think what has worked for this project... And if you remember, there are two parts of the project. One is the Coal India part, and the second is the sub-national part. So I'll start with the Coal India part. So in the Coal India part, this was a topic which was unknown in the coal industry. Maybe two people knew before we started, maybe five people knew. You can count... You can put all of those people in one room. That was the scale. But this is now a mainstream topic within the coal ecosystem. We can take some credit for that, for sure. I mean, I'm not going to say that we are the only ones. There were others also working on this. But we can also take quite a bit of credit on making this a very mainstream topic in the rank and file of the coal ecosystem in India. So that has been one great, great, great success. And building on that success, some of the questions about local economic diversification and the participation of these coal companies, those are the kinds of questions now we're trying to tackle in this field.
On the sub-national engagement, while there are so many alliances and coalitions, CSIS has other programs that also work on sub-national engagements, this was the first of its kind when it comes to the just transition question. So I think, based on this success, and based on the success of not just connecting different peers and getting something concrete out of it, but also in terms of the shifting of the thinking of this topic from national to sub-national, has really enabled now that shift. Because that was the phase one, has enabled that shift from phase one to now phase two, where we are saying, look, sub-national is very important, but really the local actors are even more important. So it paved the way for the next frontier or the next phase of this work. So I think in that way we have been able to contribute, or the project was able to contribute to the field in general.
Joseph Majkut: I just want to thank the three of you for your work and dedication to this project, and on this important issue of just transition around the world. This is embedded in so many of the global and local discussions we have today around climate, the energy transition, and the economic transitions that will accompany both of those. I look forward to our continued work together, and thanks again for joining us on Energy 360.
Lisa Hyland: Thanks to Pradip, Neelima and Sandeep for joining us. Check our program page for more on our work on just transitions.
You can find more episodes of Energy 360 at CSIS.org or wherever you listen to podcasts. Follow us on LinkedIn or X for updates from our team and thanks for listening.
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