Finding your Green Job
In this, the second blog of our ‘Education and Green Opportunities’ series, decarbonisation strategy consultant Ross Baxter describes the future of green jobs and where to find them.
Photo by Salih Ferhat via Unsplash
“When I think about climate change, the word I think of is jobs”
Can I really get a job that makes a difference?
There has got to be more to life after college than this, right? Sometimes making a living doesn’t feel like enough – we want to do meaningful work, and – as corny as it sounds – change the world for the better.
For more than half of young people in the UK, a fulfilling career is synonymous with a green career.
A career which doesn’t plunder the world’s resources. A career which seeks to rebuild and protect. A career in which money isn’t the only thing that matters.
We’ve got some good news. Sustainability is finally high on the agenda for businesses and society at large – and it’s no longer relegated to the status of an optional ‘add-on’ or marketing ploy. No, with net zero targets looming on the horizon, governments and businesses are finally taking serious action against climate change, and the good news for us is that they’re going to need lots of people with lots of different skills to help them do it.
We’re facing big questions about our future, and it will take many people and lots of different ways of thinking to answer them:
““How do we sustainably heat our homes and offices?”
“How do we travel, fuel our vehicles and generate electricity in a way that does not wreck the planet?”
“How do we decarbonise the industries (like steel and cement) that we have relied on for so long?””
Jobs will be created in governments, local councils and businesses to develop and implement solutions to these problems. And with new jobs, comes demand for a huge breadth of skillsets. And this demand is only going to grow:
Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) focused regulation will quicken the pace of change
With climate focused regulations comes more job opportunities. This is because businesses are trying to understand the requirements, and put in place processes to ensure they comply.
In the US and EU investors are demanding that companies disclose two main things:
How they are responding to ESG matters including how exposed their business is to the physical effects of climate change
Whether their business model has a long term low carbon future.
Among the many different ESG regulations perhaps the most important is the EU Taxonomy which, from March 2021, will require large companies to clearly disclose what proportion of their revenue and capital expenditure is earned and spent on specific activities which mitigate against and adapt to climate change. Put simply, this makes two clear statements to investors:
Here’s how much money the company currently earns in a climate-conscious manner;
Here’s how much the company is investing to improve its environmental performance.
The aim is to create a standard way in which companies have to show what they are doing about climate change. This will limit the amount of “greenwashing” (merely presenting an image of sustainability) and instead actually reduce emissions. Achieving this will take new strategies, technologies and mind-sets in the workplace.
This all sounds hopeful. But how do we turn this into an actual job?
A simple way to find out would be to follow those emissions!
Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions
A handful of sectors cause the majority of emissions: Transport, Energy, Heating. Basically, this is where the jobs will be because they’ve got a lot of changing to do to secure a low carbon future for their business and to keep up with regulations.
Take the energy sector as an example: the UK has the world’s largest operating offshore wind capacity and this is targeted to quadruple in size by 2030. These wind farms will need to be designed, maintained and operated and with a supply chain behind them this target will support 62,000 jobs in the process.
Green jobs aren’t necessarily in green places
Major oil and gas companies are also trying to figure out where they fit in a greener future. Both BP and Shell are targeting net zero by 2050, for example, and they’re going to need a lot of manpower to get them there. Ironically, then, some of the most crucial green jobs could be found in the world’s biggest polluting companies. But can they do it? A Danish company called Ørsted, the world’s largest wind energy developer sure did. It operated as an oil and natural gas company for 40 years before switching to 100% renewables in the last decade.
We have 30 years to reach net zero and we need to get cracking
So finding that green job isn’t such an unrealistic #lifegoal after all. Whether you’re a budding engineer, scientist or lawyer, a project manager or accountant (the list goes on) there will be a green job out there for you. These jobs will bring about one of the most exciting shifts in our way of life. Government and business need people to design and implement decarbonisation plans and address exposure to climate risk. Why not be one of them?