Blue collar, white collar, green collar. Where are all the jobs in climate?
There are a lot of opportunities emerging, and not just in the places you'd expect.
TL;DR
One of the silver linings created by climate change is the creation of new jobs. This new subset of the global economy is being referred to as the ‘Green Collar workforce’. And the good news is that almost 80% of the skills required for this workforce can be transferred from existing industries.
Key terms:
Green skills: knowledge to help develop and support a resource-efficient society
Green jobs: positions with a specific focus on restoring the environment
🌍 Firstly, what counts as a ‘climate job’?
At one end of the spectrum is the idea that ‘every job is a climate job’ i.e. anyone can make their job into one that helps the environment. But for the purposes of this article, we’ll say that ‘climate jobs’ are those that directly work on mitigation and adaptation to the impacts of climate change.
📈 And why the growing momentum for jobs in the climate space?
Lots of reasons, but to name a few:
Political action: International agreements such as the 1997 Kyoto Protocol or 2015 Paris Agreement have helped bring climate change into public discourse
Financial means: Governments and traditional institutions are mobilising new funding for climate-related activities
Corporate accountability: Consumers have started to demand more environmental action of the businesses they buy from and work for
Social: The Covid-19 pandemic triggered a ‘Great Resignation’ which was closely followed by traditional technology companies doing mass layoffs, creating a newly employable workforce
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🔮 So what are some of the opportunities developing?
Let’s break this down into jobs, skills, and sectors.
1. Jobs
Data from Linkedin’s Global Green Skills Report 2022 shows a 38.5% growth rate in the ‘green global workforce’ between 2015 and 2021.
At a high level, the top 5 fastest growing ‘green jobs’ were a mix between the sector-specific and cross-sector roles:
Sustainability Manager (30%+ annual growth)
Wind Turbine Technician (24%+)
Solar Consultant (23%+)
Ecologist (22%+)
Environmental Health and Safety Specialist (20%+)
Meanwhile there was a rise in the demand for traditional roles like risk management, compliance, regulation, and facilities management now emerging in the climate space.
Source: LinkedIn Global Green Skills Report 2022
2. Skills
Data from Climatebase.org, the largest climate-specific jobs website in the world, shows the most in demand skills on their website are not actually on the technical side, which might come as a surprise.
Instead, climate companies are in desperate need of Sales and Business Development talent [17%], followed by skills for Marketing and Communications [9%]. One theory for this is that whilst there are many innovations materialising through research programmes and technical trials, the bottleneck is how to get these out of the lab and into the real world.
Source: Climatebase.org
Sectors
🔋 Energy:
Worldwide, growth in renewable power capacity is set to double by 2027. LinkedIn predicts that jobs in the Renewables & Environment sector will outnumber Oil & Gas jobs on the platform by 2023
There is evidence of a net increase of 5 x full-time jobs when comparing direct and supply chain roles in renewable energy and fossil fuels [7.72 full time jobs created from $1 million spending in renewables > 2.65 full time jobs created in fossil fuels]
There are already examples of transferable skills in the energy space, such as workers moving from servicing oil rigs to off-shore wind farms as is happening in Scotland.
🥩 Agriculture
Vertical farming (growing food in buildings several stories high and often urban areas) will require a new blend of sectors, including the combined skills of architects, horticulturalists, software engineers, and town planners to deliver
Lab-grown meats (love them or hate them) will be a $25 billion industry by 2030, creating new jobs for scientists, chefs, and across the hospitality industry
🚘 Automotives
The move to electric has helped the share of green talent increase by 11.3% annually for the past five years in Europe, driven specifically by Germany which produces a high number of cars and has many government subsidies to increase sales
Core roles focus on improving energy storage and battery efficiency, designing of new models of electric vehicles, and the opportunity for many more players in the charging infrastructure space
👚 Fashion
A specific ‘Pollution Prevention’ skill in fashion was the fastest growing skill-in-demand according to LinkedIn’s research, with a 90.6% growth over the six-year period.
As the water, chemical, and landfill effects of fashion become more prevalent, this is creating opportunity in both the design hubs (usually located in Europe and North America), and in manufacturing hubs (predominantly Asia)
🏦 Finance
The ‘greening’ and risk management of existing investment portfolios is creating new roles relating to Environmental Social Governance [ESG]
Even the [notoriously hard] Institute for Chartered Financial Accountants has evolved to offer an ESG investing specific course
⏩ Is it all good news on the job creation front?
Unfortunately not.
Climate change will significantly impact many traditional roles and industries, which will lead to a roles becoming redundant or even impossible. Deloitte estimates that more than 800 million jobs, or a quarter of the global workforce, are highly vulnerable to climate weather extremes and economic transitions, such as agriculture, energy & mining, and manufacturing.
Even if the industries can withstand the changes, many sectors will also need active upskilling of employees to meet new green regulations and decarbonization strategies; Corporate Services, Manufacturing, and Energy & Mining have the most work ahead here.
Source: LinkedIn Global Green Skills Report 2022
Job creation also isn’t equally distributed, with green talent growth in high-income countries [39%] almost double that of lower-income countries [18%].
This makes it even more important that governments and companies fast-forward on their climate adaptation strategies to ensure more workers are not left behind.
👀 So what are some resources for the climate curious?
Visit Climatebase.org to see all the latest roles in the climate space, and sign up for their newsletter for a weekly drop of roles into your inbox. They also have a Fellowship Program which focuses on practical skills development for climate roles
Speedandscale.com breaks down our huge climate goal into 10 core ideas, look here to find a sector you might want to work on
Enrol in free climate courses with generalist learning platforms like Coursera and UN Climate Change E-Learn
Start listening to podcasts such as My Climate Journey which interview founders on their climate-related companies
Sign up for the Climate Tech VC newsletter to see the latest fundraises for climate companies
🐘 Fun climate fact:
Asian and African elephants are helping with the fight against climate change through their dietary choices. Their preference for leaves and fruits from small, leafy trees is creating space for larger, more carbon-dioxide absorbing trees to grow. As a result, forests with elephants hold more carbon than forests without them.
Thanks for reading!