Europe’s low‑carbon transition is driving rapid growth in STEM‑related and energy‑sector careers, with policy initiatives such as the UK’s Green Jobs Delivery Group (Gov.uk, 2024) and the European Commission’s Net Zero Industry Act and Green Deal (European Commission, 2023) projecting substantial increases in green jobs to support renewable energy, decarbonisation, and sustainable infrastructure. Yet disabled young people remain systematically excluded from these pathways, despite being among the populations most affected by the social, economic and environmental consequences of the transition (Pearson et al, 2021).

Exclusion in schools begins early as the structures guiding Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) provision, alongside persistent practices of mainstream and alternative provision exclusion, fragment access to the STEM learning trajectories required for participation in emerging green‑skills sectors. Globally, SEND classification, behaviour‑based removal from classrooms, placement in segregated educational settings, and reduced access to accredited STEM qualifications cumulatively limit disabled learners’ opportunities to engage with the very subjects that underpin future low‑carbon labour markets (Bruyère & Filiberto, 2013; Buettgen et al., 2024). These policy‑based barriers are well‑documented within our wider project and reflect national patterns in which disabled pupils are disproportionately affected by inequitable, punitive or restrictive schooling policies (Lazar et al, 2024).  

A similarly powerful mechanism of exclusion operates through representational practices. Disabled young people scarcely appear in the visual communications produced by NGOs, schools, or STEM‑intervention providers promoting green‑skills futures (Hodkinson, 2016; Jensen et al, 2023). This representational exclusion limits the symbolic belonging of disabled youth, institutional expectations, and cultural imaginaries that shape outreach, recruitment and curriculum design across the green‑jobs pipeline (Watts Belser, 2020). The absence of disabled bodies in visual narratives implicitly conveys the message that the low‑carbon transition is not for, with, or about disabled young people. Done et al (2025) conceptualise (un)just transitions by emphasising that justice in energy futures must account not only for technological and economic inclusion but also for the harmful effects of educational, procedural and symbolic marginalisation.

Without intervention, the green transition risks becoming a vehicle for socio-economic regression, entrenching the marginalisation of disabled learners by excluding them from the most resilient sectors of the 21st-century labour market. Furthermore, this study addresses representational silence within NGO and educational materials. By tracing how these resources fail to visualise disabled people in STEM roles, the research exposes a form of symbolic annihilation that discourages disabled youth from developing a scientific identity. This work is a necessary first step in ensuring that the clean energy mission is truly inclusive by design rather than by afterthought. By focusing on both structural (policy) and symbolic (visual representation) domains, this study will inform future research related to equitable green‑skills development, including further exploration and identification of practical levers through which education systems, NGOs and policymakers can address the barriers currently restricting disabled young people’s participation in low‑carbon futures.

This small-scale qualitative study investigates the systematic exclusion of disabled youth from green-energy trajectories, and how exclusionary processes unfold locally and nationally. An (un)just transition is both structural (the distribution of rules, qualifications, resources) and symbolic (recognition, visual representation) (Done et al., 2025). Study objectives included: 1. Methodological innovation: To refine tools for capturing the lived experiences of disabled young people around policy-based and representational exclusion. 2. Mechanistic mapping: To identify specific educational patterns, e.g., the ‘punitive’ redirection from STEM subjects, warranting investigation in future large-scale European studies. 3. Collaborative co-production: To test inclusive approaches with NGOs, educators, and young people, guiding the development of ethically grounded, visually inclusive communication tools to reflect the diverse reality of the future workforce. Research questions: • How do policy assemblages governing SEND, exclusion, and STEM provision enable or restrict disabled young people’s progression into energy‑sector careers? • How do disabled pupils outside mainstream schooling experience STEM learning and envisage futures in green work? • How do visual communications in NGO‑led and school‑based STEM interventions represent (or omit) disabled young people? • What organisational practices shape NGO imagery pipelines and what changes would increase representational diversity? Two interconnected work packages were designed to address high-level policy and classroom reality: 1) Policy Assemblages and Lived Experience. A multi-level textual content analysis of English SEND, STEM, and climate-transition policies and 10 semi-structured interviews with disabled learners currently positioned outside of mainstream education, SEND educators, and policymakers, will facilitate: a) mapping how disparate regulations on school attendance, behaviour, and exam accessibility cumulatively constrain the STEM learning trajectories the energy sector requires; b) tracing how a disabled student’s educational path is fragmented long before entry into the labour market. 2) Visual Communication and NGO Practice. Acknowledging representation as a form of recognition, a mixed-methods visual content analysis of STEM materials produced by leading NGOs over a five-year period and 10 semi-structured interviews with communications and outreach staff, permits: a) tracing decision making from sourcing to editorial decisions to identify internal organisational barriers preventing diverse representation; b) identifying how exclusion of disabled bodies in green-skills marketing reinforces structural barriers. Analysis will move beyond deficit models of disability to demonstrate how disability inclusion is so often an afterthought in green-skills policy (Buettgen et al., 2024) and to highlight tensions in Europe’s low-carbon transition: the risk that the ‘green revolution’ will entrench socio-economic inequalities unless educational pathways to STEM are radically reimagined.

The project will generate a set of interlinked empirical, conceptual and practical outcomes to advance understanding of how disabled young people are systematically marginalised within emerging low‑carbon and STEM‑related career pathways. Empirically, the study will offer new evidence on how policy assemblages, particularly those governing SEND provision, school exclusion, and alternative education pathways, shape disabled pupils’ access to the foundational STEM learning required for participation in the net zero transition. By combining policy analysis with qualitative insights from young people, educators and stakeholders, the project will illuminate the mechanisms through which gatekeeping, fragmented provision and inequitable access to qualifications restrict opportunities long before disabled young people encounter the labour market. The research will highlight representational practices within NGO‑led and school‑based STEM interventions, revealing how disabled young people are often visually absent or marginalised in green‑skills communications, and how these omissions shape aspirations, participation and perceived legitimacy within low‑carbon futures. Building on earlier theorising around (un)just transitions for youth and disabled learners, the study will refine and extend a justice‑oriented framework that articulates how recognitional and procedural equity must be operationalised within both energy policy and educational design, STEM outreach, and institutional communications. Conceptually, this framework will support researchers and practitioners in distinguishing between skills‑based barriers and injustices related to (in)visibility, in/exclusion and structural inequities. Practically, the project will produce a suite of applied tools aimed at supporting more inclusive educational and communicative practices. These will include policy recommendations to reduce gatekeeping, strengthen bridging routes from alternative provision, and embed accessibility within STEM curricula and qualifications; a visual communications guide offering actionable checklists for imagery pipelines, accessibility audits, and a representative image bank for use by NGOs, teachers and STEM‑learning providers seeking to build more equitable green‑skills futures.

Bruyère, S., & Filiberto, D. (2013). The green economy and job creation: Inclusion of people with disabilities in the USA. International Journal of Green Economics, 7(3), 257–275. https://doi.org/10.1504/IJGE.2013.058164 Buettgen, A., Lofts, K., & Tompa, E. (2024). Disability inclusion in the green economy: a scoping review of challenges, barriers and opportunities. Journal of Green Economy and Low-Carbon Development, 3(4), 208-222. Department for Energy Security and Net Zero. (2024, October 28). Green Jobs Delivery Group. GOV.UK. https://www.gov.uk/government/groups/green-jobs-delivery-group Done, E. J., Knowler, H., Lazar, I., Hayes, S., Lait, J., & Perez Porres, A. (2025) (Un)just transitions for youth and the disabled? The exclusionary pressures facing science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education. Energy Research & Social Science, 129. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2025.104371 European Commission. (2023, February 1). A Green Deal Industrial Plan for the Net-Zero Age (COM(2023) 62 final). https://commission.europa.eu/document/41514677-9598-4d89-a572-abe21cb037f4_en Hodkinson, A. (2016). School textbooks and the avoidance of disability: Emptied of representation. In D. Bolt & C. Penketh (Eds.), Disability, avoidance and the academy: Challenging resistance (pp. 57–67). Routledge. Jensen, M. S., Herrebrøden, M., & Andreassen, U. R. (2023). The invisible minority: why do textbook authors avoid people with disabilities in their books? International Journal of Inclusive Education, 27(12), 1287–1303. https://doi.org/10.1080/13603116.2021.1889049 Lazar, I., Hayes, S., Knowler, H., Done, E., & Lait, J. (2024, June 18). Understanding barriers to participation in energy sector career pathways for disabled young people: Not seen and not heard? Ignite Network+. https://www.ignitenetplus.ac.uk/view/items/id/1639/funded_project-understanding-barriers-to-participation-in-energy-sector-career-pathways-for-disabled-young-people-not-seen-and-not-heard Pearson, C., Watson, N., Gangneux, J., & Norberg, I. (2021). Transition to where and to what? Exploring the experiences of transitions to adulthood for young disabled people. Journal of Youth Studies, 24(10), 1291–1307. https://doi.org/10.1080/13676261.2020.1820972 Watts Belser, J., (2020) “Disability, Climate Change, and Environmental Violence: The Politics of Invisibility and the Horizon of Hope”, Disability Studies Quarterly 40(4). doi: https://doi.org/10.18061/dsq.v40i4.6959