AUGUST
2009
The
House of Commons
Environmental
Audit Committee (EAC)
is currently conducting an inquiry into the prospects for green jobs
and policies aimed at increasing employment in environmental
industries. It will consider how the UK can maximise the
environmentally positive opportunities arising from changes in public
spending and how this might help with employment during the
recession.
The
report will also examine other areas, including barriers to creating
green jobs and analyse where the gaps are in the skills base for the
UK environmental industries. Interestingly Tim Yeo – Chairman of the
EAC, has called for the government to lead by example and do more to
achieve its own environmental targets. He told the BBC;
“If
the government expects everybody else to be getting greener, it’s
important that it should lead from the front. It is missing its own
target for cutting carbon emissions from the government’s own
offices, it’s using less renewable energy, not more, and its
recycling rate is falling, not rising.” 5th
August 2009.
The
EAC
inquiry comes hot-on-the-heels of the publication of the report
‘Green
Jobs: Towards Decent Work in a Sustainable, Low-Carbon World’
funded by the UNEP (United
Nations Environmental Programme)
. This year Allen
& York were delighted to be recognised as one of the first 100
participants of the UNEP – Climate
Neutral Network (CN Net)
and
therefore took great interest in this recent report which is looking
at green careers across the globe.
The
UNEP report
predicts
that there will be a significant rise in ‘green jobs’
particularly within the Energy industry. This will come from a shift
in public spending from fossil fuels (oil and natural gas) to
renewable energy sources (wind, solar and geothermal power), and that
the 1 million people already working in biofuels, could rise by 12
million by 2030.
New jobs could also result, (the report
suggests) from the expansion of recycling
and environmental engineering (e.g. engineering new eco-vehicles).
Wales as an example has proposed targets to see 70% of domestic &
municipal waste and 90% of construction waste recycled by 2025.
Jane Davidson (Environment,
Sustainability and Housing Minster
- Welsh Assembly) said she was keen to get Wales living within its
resources and pioneer sustainability in the UK; “There
are tremendous opportunities to save money and create high quality
industry in Wales by using the valuable material resources contained
in waste.”
What does this mean in terms of actual
numbers of jobs? Well Ed
Miliband, (UK
Secretary of State
for Energy and Climate Change) predicts
that the environmental industries across Britain could generate an
extra 400,000 jobs by 2015 and the UNEP report predicts that the
manufacture, installation and maintenance of solar panels alone, will
be such a booming industry that it will generate 6.3 million more
jobs worldwide by 2030.
These are
all large, optimistic numbers and some might say (including Tim Yeo
maybe?) that we will have to move a lot faster to reach these
ambitious targets. However, what is does show is another global
commitment to move the world towards a greener, more sustainable
society and that can only mean the creation of more green jobs.
As leaders
in Environmental Recruitment – Allen
& York were asked by
the Independent
Newspaper this month to
give their opinion on the growth of environmental recruitment and the
prospects of career changers looking at moving into this industry.
The
biggest area here,
Allen & York suggest, is people with generic project management
skills, picked up in another industry, such as construction, for
example or sometimes individuals with experience of a specific
business role prove to have easily transferable skills. Allen
& York
managed a move recently for a telecommunications firm employee, whose
role was buying land for new masts. He moved to a role buying land to
site wind turbines.
Other
upcoming areas where strong project management and commercial skills
will enable a shift toward the green agenda are the Carbon Reduction
Commitment or CRCs that come into force in April 2010. There are
certainly insufficient skills in the market to ensure that all
businesses hit their “commitment” effectively so solid project
managers from all sorts of backgrounds are being lined-up within
firms to manage the carbon reductions, if not to set the policy and
actions at the outset. During the downturn this affords some
businesses a fresh area in which to house those redundant from other
sectors. As things pick up however, we will see this trend extend in
to the recruitment of project delivery teams from a wealth of
differing fields.
Another
good example of where transferable skills can be used
is in the field of Corporate
Social Responsibility (CSR),
a growth area for many companies. CSR spans all levels, from the
Board to Junior roles and often begins within Marketing and PR teams.
However, when taken on properly by a company it becomes part of the
business and drives every day activity. Often skills will be
acquired ‘on the job’, and people who initially have minimal
environmental training may find themselves obtaining further
qualifications to enhance their newly found skills. The Institute
of Environmental Management & Assessment (IEMA)
is a good place to find introductory training courses.
As
we approach the Copenhagen summit to find a successor
to the Kyoto agreement, and as more environmental pledges are made by
global governments, we need to ensure that the infrastructure is in
place to deliver on the targets. Allen
& York
anticipate a surge in Environmental job opportunities over the next
few years and look forward to supporting existing environmental
experts, as well as career changers looking to start a new ‘green
career’.
By Joe
Heppenstall and Miriam Heale – Allen & York Ltd
Thursday