Place and power in the remaking of fossil fuel sites: a study of just transition drivers in an Australian coal region

In addressing the question of ‘who drives just transition’, we show the importance of regional geography in understanding change. We examine the closure of coal mines and power stations in one locality, Collie in Western Australia. To date, the just transition and climate politics literatures have focused on the critical role of state intervention in a transition from fossil fuel extraction and use. Our conceptual framing builds upon these approaches by drawing on insights from environmental politics and economic geography. We concentrate on the importance of place, as constructed over time, and power, as both energy and politics. Our study shows that besides the state, other actors, chiefly labour, must deploy their power if the transition is to be just. We further show how the local scale is critical to the just transition policy processes and outcomes. In examining an unusually positive case, in terms of process and, to a lesser extent, outcomes, the singular constellation of local factors that has driven this program serves to highlight that just transition in general is extremely difficult. This is because of the fragility of the ways in which those local factors coalesce and because of the wider pressures of firm ownership, market structures and politics.