To better assess which U.S. communities will be hardest hit by the transition to clean energy, Kailin Graham, a graduate researcher at the MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, and MIT Sloan's Christopher Knittel created a new metric of employment vulnerability called an “employment carbon footprint.”

The tool allows officials to understand how community reliance on fossil fuels might overlap with other socioeconomic and demographic factors so they can target transition policy and allocate funds to the most vulnerable.