Are green jobs just jobs? Cadmium narratives in the life cycle of Photovoltaics

This paper explores a tension between environmental justice and green jobs. Photovoltaic (PV) manufacturing processes involve hazardous chemicals similar to those found in the electronics industry, where impacts such as groundwater contamination, worker exposures to chemicals, and other air and water emissions overlap with environmental inequality. In the US, cadmium-based thin-film PV was financed with support from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act producing new political ecological configurations of energy procurement and generation, linking Malaysian thin film PV fabs to public lands in the US desert southwest. By integrating traditions in global commodity chains, political ecology, and science and technology studies, this research shows how life cycle assessment was used to shape the debate about cadmium pollution from thin-film PV. As metrics have the power to obscure environmental injustice, the findings call for humility when interpreting life cycle assessment.