Workplace disruptions are becoming increasingly common as society struggles to adapt to the effects of global warming, the decline of biodiversity, and other environmental crises. According to the International Labor Organization, the oil and gas industry directly employs about six million people and indirectly employs more than ten times that number. But as the globe shifts away from fossil fuels, that figure is projected to fall. However, there will be more job openings in environmentally conscious industries like renewable energy, electric transportation, energy efficiency, and carbon capture and storage because of the massive financial potential of these trends.
Getting to a low-carbon energy transition that will restrict global temperature rises to sustainable levels will cost $131 trillion by 2050, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency in Masdar City, Abu Dhabi. According to the International Labor Organization, this shift might provide as many as 100 million new jobs by the year 2030. The number of jobs in renewable energy and the environment has expanded by 237 percent over the past five years, as reported by LinkedIn’s Global Green Skills Report 2022. According to LinkedIn, the percentage of “green talent” in the world’s workforce will increase from 9.6% in 2015 to 13.3% in 2021. In this article, we examine potential industries for future green job growth. Joe Biden, the Democratic candidate to Donald Trump in the upcoming 2020 US presidential election, brought up the potential of wind energy to create jobs if the sector was prioritized during their discussion.
“It’s the fastest-growing jobs and they pay decent prevailing wages, forty-five, fifty bucks an hour,” Mr Biden remarked. If we take the path I’m recommending, we can both expand and improve environmental conditions. Mr. Biden is witnessing the fruits of his efforts to promote green development just over halfway through his four-year term as president. Reports indicate that $35 billion has been invested in major green projects in the country since the passing of Mr. Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act last year, which offers tax incentives and other sweeteners for investments in the likes of wind farms and electric car battery plants, putting the US at the forefront of green job creation.
Rapid global increases in demand for workers with the necessary abilities are being driven by the rise in investment in renewable energy. LinkedIn found that between 2016 and 2021, the number of wind turbine technicians expanded by 24 percent annually and the number of solar consultants climbed by 23 percent. These two careers are directly related to renewable energy. Irena projects that by 2021 there will be 12.7 million people employed in the renewable energy sector worldwide, with solar power accounting for 4.1 million of those positions. Despite a drop in activity due to the Covid-19 outbreak, Irena reported that the number of jobs in the renewable energy sector increased by 700,000.
According to “The Ten Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution,” a report released by the United Kingdom’s government in 2020, the hydrogen energy sector (hydrogen is a new way to store renewable energy) could provide employment for as many as 10,000 people in the country by 2030 and for as many as 100,000 people by 2050. Technologies called “carbon capture and storage” are used to sequester carbon dioxide (CO2) that is produced during industrial processes like steel or cement manufacturing. In addition to measures to minimize the amount of the greenhouse gas released into the atmosphere, many academics have called for widespread efforts to store CO2.
CCS is “a nascent green sector but one that has been highlighted as crucial by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,” according to “A strategy for green workforce transformation,” a paper published by Deloitte and the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment last year. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is injected into subsurface rock formations after being purified at industrial operations and transported through road, sea, or pipelines. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) and its associated technique, carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS), might make use of most of the existing oil and gas infrastructure, according to Professor Susana Garcia of the UK’s Heriot-Watt University, which has a campus in Dubai. Additional steps, such as utilizing carbon dioxide to produce construction materials, are incorporated into CCUS as well.
“In the UK and specifically in Scotland, we are in a very fortunate position because we have all the assets and all the resources that are available in the North Sea… for the oil and gas industry, so there’s a lot going on in terms of how to repurpose all those assets and all that infrastructure for CCS and for CCUS,” she said. For this reason, “there is a big opportunity there to retrain individuals who have been working on those subjects for many, many years and adapt their talents to the new employment, to the green jobs that are going to be needed in the green economy.” Professor Garcia argued that while energy sector transformation will not lead to a net loss of jobs, it would alter the nature of those jobs that are necessary in the future.
There’s no way to afford to lose all those oil and gas workers, she argued. The appropriate ones for adopting low-carbon technologies like CCUS will emerge from this process. The move to a low-carbon economy is creating employment, but many of them are in industries that aren’t generally associated with sustainability, according to experts. Therefore, LinkedIn’s Global Green Skills Report from 2016 focused on occupations that may help industries lessen their carbon impact, such as data scientists and fleet managers. Green skills are in high demand “not just in areas associated to substantial decarbonisation and energy transition,” as Deloitte and the IEMA noted in their green workforce transformation study. They concluded that industries producing high-end items and information technology were the most promising places to find employment for those with green expertise.
This could suggest that “many organizations have already recognized the competitive benefits that may result from early adoption of environmentally friendly business strategies.” According to Rehan Haque, CEO of Metatalent.ai, which helps companies train their staff, a thorough understanding of environmental issues and their significance in the workplace is becoming increasingly important for many positions. In terms of money, information technology, the environment, and renewable power, what does sustainability look like? According to him, that’s the mentality that’s required of workers. Almost everything will be affected by the way we train and educate our youth today. Our goal is to help students choose wisely based on all of the information they have.
To determine what, if any, value they could bring, they must adopt a green perspective. The existence of sufficient “green talents,” which Mr. Haque defines as “the information, abilities, values, and attitude needed to live in, develop, and support a sustainable and resource-efficient society,” is not guaranteed. According to LinkedIn’s Global Green Skills Report, “we have not made enough progress,” especially in terms of providing workers with the green skills necessary to satisfy this expanding need. “The demand for green-skilled workers has increased at a faster rate than the supply of green talent.” More money is thought to be needed because the organization said the number of people going into green jobs is “still really low” compared to what is needed to limit climate change.
