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What makes a green job ‘green’? Introducing the sustainability job market

As the world faces urgent climate challenges, the demand for sustainability-focused jobs is surging, driven by global goals to cut greenhouse gas emissions and achieve net-zero by 2050. This article explores why pursuing a career in the green economy is not just a trend but a critical necessity, and how opportunities extend beyond the traditional green tech start-ups to established corporations investing heavily in sustainability.

This is the first of a series of articles dedicated to Green Tech Jobs.

Here we start by presenting the business case for sustainability: why should you consider landing a job in the green economy? Are opportunities to be found only within a restricted club of green tech companies and start-ups? In fact, what exactly is a ‘green’ tech job? And what green skills are in highest demand right now?

The clock is ticking. In August 2021, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change called for drastic measures to be taken worldwide in order to achieve the Paris agreement goal of halving global greenhouse gas emissions and hitting net-zero by 2050.

With international organizations such as the UN pushing national governments to meet sustainability goals, businesses are under increasing pressure to scale down their environmental impact and accelerate the green transition.

To achieve net-zero emissions, there is an urgent need for new technologies and tech solutions, which must undergo rapid designdevelopment and.

As most of these products are not yet available, the role of climate tech start-ups has become crucial across the main sectors of the Climate economy: Mobility & TransportEnergyFood, Agriculture and Land UseBuilt Environment.

Working at a Climate Tech start-up

Climate Tech start-ups haven’t been around for that long, hence their need for experienced technologists such as software developers and data scientists who can recruit, build and train in-house teams.

Full-stack engineers are also in high demand at the moment – many of these organizations require user interface components, with candidates expected to be highly proficient in JavaScriptPython and Node.

Despite the opportunities opened by the green tech start-up scene, recruiters have found that job seekers often struggle to understand how exactly their educationwork experience and skills may transfer to such an innovative field.

If you were to focus your job hunt on ‘traditional’ organizations, adding ‘sustainable’ or ‘green’ to a LinkedIn search will only take you so far: some of the bigger establishments do have sustainability departments dedicated to the green transition but in most cases, these are very small teams.

green tech workers

The problem is that many people see sustainability as a wholly independent job market, with ‘green’ employers associated exclusively with Climate Tech start-ups and ‘green’ positions with highly specialised job titles.

However, some of the biggest ‘green’ opportunities often come from more conventional roles embedded in seemingly ‘non-green’ sectors, companies and functions.

Working towards the green transition

To make the green transition happen, it’s vital that jobseekers change the way they think about the ‘greenness’ of jobs: the fight for global decarbonization has been taken up by a much wider spectrum of players than climate tech start-ups only.

Eco-friendly employers include renewables operators, as well as government organizationssocial enterprisesnon-profit organizationsresearch & consulting firms and even corporations.

Corporations may not strike most people as the epitome of eco-friendliness, but many of them have been committing huge investments to net-zero initiatives, such as Amazon’s $2bn ‘Climate PledgeMicrosoft’s $1 billion Climate Innovation Fund and Unilever’s €1 billion climate fund.

This has come to be known as ‘corporate greening’, an ongoing trend that has seen more and more corporations acknowledge the business case for sustainability, integrating in their business models a wide range of green practices, including energy conservation, recycling, sustainable packaging and sourcing.

Corporate greening has unlocked a whole new spectrum of sustainable job opportunities across a variety of ‘traditional’ sectors, including Product designSupply chainsManufacturingTransportationFood systems and AgricultureWaste and Wastewater Management.

The point is that jobs aren’t quite “green” or “not green” but their greenness is unique to each and every position depending on the greenness of the skills required.

working in green tech

How to Find Green Tech Jobs

Research by LinkedIn has found that the number of ‘traditional’ jobs including green skills has been growing consistently in the last few years.

Last year, nearly 10% of job postings required at least one green skill, while the share of green talent in the global workforce increased from 9.6% in 2015 to 13.3% in 2022 at a growth rate of 38.5%.

In most national economies throughout the world, green hiring is now growing at a faster rate than traditional hiring.

This means that green workers, namely workers with one or more green skills, are getting employed at higher rates than non-green workers in most countries.

Here in the United States green hiring is now standard practice, with the average job here deploying 2.5 times more green skills than the average job globally.

Even the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 did not slow down green hiring, showing that a green skillset may help you secure your career from future economic recessions.

In fact, greening your skills may well be a long-term investment.

Presently, the job market is seeing a relatively even match between green talent demand and supply but this is expected to change very soon.

Green job postings have been growing at 8% annually over the past five years, while the share of green talent has grown at 6% annually in the same time period.

This gap is expected to widen, with recent forecasts predicting that the demand for green skills will exceed supply within the next five years.

Translated for all jobseekers out there: very soon, there is going to be an urgent need for workers with green skills.

This includes traditional tech sectors like Software & IT Services, where workers are now transitioning into green jobs faster than into non-green jobs:  for every 100 software/IT professionals taking up a non-green job, there are nearly 477 workers who are transitioning into a green role.

If you’re looking to use your tech skills to fight climate change, it doesn’t quite matter whether you’re targeting a Climate Tech start-up or a ‘traditional’ tech establishment.

Instead, you should start by greening your skills.

Here is a list of the top green skills required by employers according to LinkedIn, along with the percentage of job postings requiring each skill:

  • Sustainable Development (27.6%)
  • Environmental Remediation (8.8%)
  • Environmental Policy (8.6%)
  • Ecosystem Management (5.6%)
  • Renewable Energy Generation (5.4%)
  • Ecosystem Management (9%)
  • Corporate Social Responsibility Environmental Policy (2.5%)
  • Recycling Environmental Remediation (2.1%)

The most effective way to develop green skills is via green work experience, especially when it comes to highly specialised or technical skills such as ecosystem management, renewable energy generation and recycling environmental remediation.

If you’re looking for a speedy transition into the green economy, you may want to begin by reading books and articles, attending conferences and webinars and, eventually, attending an online course from a top business institution.

Here are some of the top online courses that can help you to develop green skills and make you competitive in the sustainability job market:

We hope you found this post useful, and don’t be afraid to get in touch by emailing us at [email protected] if you have any questions relating to advancing your climate tech career.

———–

We hope you’ve found this article useful and supportive of your efforts to make a positive impact. 

We are niche technology recruitment specialists matching diverse and innovative technology teams with the most sought after, hard-to-reach, talent. If you would like to find out more about working with us, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

And hey, if you did find this article helpful, please don’t be afraid to share it on your social networks!

About the Author

Ruggero Galtarossa profile

Ruggero Galtarossa is a PHD Researcher with a background in Journalism and Sociology. He studied at Cambridge University, England, and has worked as a content creator for Incubeta, an international team of experts in marketing, technology, data, and creative. He currently works as PHD Researcher and technology writer.

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