The transition to a net-zero carbon emissions world will have far-reaching consequences on every aspect of life and will be especially felt in the global economy.
According to estimates from Our World in Data, a non-profit, economic activity directly contributed to about 70 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions before the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.
As a result, facilitating a green economic transition is critical to reaching the net-zero emissions goals rolled out by countries in the wake of the 2015 Paris Climate Accords.
However, a 2022 report from LinkedIn says the green economy needs to grow faster to meet these goals, and one of the emerging challenges is the growing deficit of green talent to fit new green and greening jobs. These jobs include skills that "enable the environmental sustainability of economic activities", and not just in engineering but also in finance, business, and many other streams.
Studies that have looked at the specific skills and tasks in some of these directly green jobs tend to find that they require more education and involve more non-routine analytical tasks than non-green jobs
From 2015 to 2021, the share of green talent in the global workforce grew by six percent annually, while the number of green job postings rose by eight percent in the same period.
“Between the supply and the demand side, there's a bit of a mismatch,” says Mattias Larsen, an industrial development expert at the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO). He adds, “There always is, but in developing countries, where things change faster, there will be a bigger mismatch.”
Most green jobs have traditionally been in the energy sector, such as wind turbine technicians and solar panel installers. However, this is rapidly changing as other sectors of the economy begin to green.
“Thinking particularly of the United Kingdom or other similar economies, the experience to date of de-carbonisation has been a lot of action in the energy sector,” says Anna Valero, a senior policy fellow at the London School of Economics Centre for Economic Performance.
“But the next phase will require much more action in other parts of the economy such as transport, heating buildings and construction,” she adds. “There’s going to be different types of jobs.”
While many of the green jobs are associated with post-industrialised nations, Virpi Stucki, head of the Rural Entrepreneurship, Job Creation and Human Security Division at UNIDO, says a new class of green jobs will rapidly emerge in industrialising countries.
These roles include functions to comply with more stringent Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) regulations, such as a proposed regulation to minimise European Union-driven deforestation and forest degradation.
“Both consumer and producer countries need to have a due diligence system in place,” Stucki says. “And you need a completely new skill set for these kinds of traceability systems, including in industrialising countries.”
Overall, the International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates that 24 million green jobs will be created globally by 2030 across various sectors from agriculture to high-tech manufacturing.
Between the supply and the demand side, there's a bit of a mismatch.There always is, but in developing countries, where things change faster, there will be a bigger mismatch.
According to a recent report co-authored by Valero, many directly green jobs are held by university graduates, many of whom have a STEM (science, technology, engineering or math) concentration.
“Studies that have looked at the specific skills and tasks in some of these directly green jobs tend to find that they require more education and involve more non-routine analytical tasks than non-green jobs,” she says.
“These are cognitive tasks generally associated with more highly skilled work,” Valero adds. “But they are also harder to automate.”
While the types of green skills are expected to change as the number of directly green jobs expands into other sectors, Larsen and Stucki say that many green jobs will require new, more technology-centric skills.
“I've been asking industry players what kinds of skills they need and the most common reply I'm getting is digital literacy,” Stucki says. “Often, young people have these skills because someone needs to input large amounts of data into a digital system.”
Experts predict that the evolution of the green economy will dovetail with Industry 4.0, the ongoing integration of smart technologies into traditional industries.
“A lot of construction and installation is required in the coming decade, and once everything is in place, there will be many new green jobs related to maintenance,” says Valero.
“The nature of work and tasks involved are likely to continue to change during different phases of the journey to net-zero, including as new ‘clean’ technologies are developed and deployed,” she adds.
One of the legacies of the First Industrial Revolution, however, was the uneven development that took place, the legacies of which have precipitated the current climate crisis. As a result, Larsen, Stucki and Valero see the Fourth Industrial Revolution requiring a more equitable transition.
“Many of these new green jobs are secure, future-proof jobs in an era where some jobs might eventually die out,” says Valero. “It's important to make sure that those types of jobs are accessible to those who might be interested in them.”
Larsen and Stucki believe one of the ways to do this is to focus on a more selective skills-based education, known as micro-credentials, instead of a traditional university education, which may be out-of-date by the time students graduate.
While the net-zero transition will be disruptive to many industries, ILO data indicates that it will be more positive than negative in terms of job creation and wage growth. Of the 163 economic sectors analysed by the organisation, only 14 are expected to suffer employment losses of more than 10,000 jobs.
“Change is usually good, even though it can be a big challenge,” Larsen concludes.
