There has been a dramatic growth in recent years in green employment, and it is expected that the pool of green talent will need to double at a minimum by 2050 to keep pace with net zero goals. For policymakers weak on taking climate action green jobs might be the upside of what has otherwise been viewed as a disruptive and painful economic transition away from fossil fuel and polluting industries which traditionally provided the bedrock of blue-collar jobs.
But what is a green job exactly? Back in 2008 the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) defined green jobs as those that contribute appreciably to maintaining or restoring environmental quality and avoiding future damage to the Earth’s ecosystems. For example, green jobs reduce the consumption of materials and energy, support decarbonisation processes, reduce waste and pollution, or restore biodiversity.
According to UNEP, green jobs need to create just and decent employment, alongside reduced environmental impacts with an emphasis on fair working conditions.
Since the introduction of new sustainability reporting requirements there are now many companies also seeking to hire skilled professionals in the area of greenhouse gas reporting, sustainability strategies and green procurement in supply chain management.
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Green jobs have sustainability at their core, and cannot be performed without extensive knowledge of green skills. But depending on which methodology is used to define and count green jobs, there can be widely differing results.
For example, you could analyse employment by sector according to its emissions intensity or assess the skills and knowledge needed to train existing workers to adapt to the green economy or even measure the amount of time spent by individual workers directly on green activities. The Nevin Institute found, for example, that using census job classifications, 27.4 per cent of all Irish jobs in 2023 could be classified as “green”.
It is not surprising that most of the new green jobs are in the renewables and energy management sectors. The skills involved here are largely technical ones such as engineering, project management and installation.
Green skills are also in demand across the manufacturing and construction sector from builders trained in low-carbon building methods and the circular economy to architects skilled in repurposing buildings and utilising green design approaches to reduce energy and materials use. Unsurprisingly there is a surge in demand for electricians, coming from both the construction and energy sectors. According to the 2024 LinkedIn Global Green Skills Report, job seekers with green skills or titles see a 79.8 per cent higher hiring rate in Ireland than the workforce overall.
If you don’t have the skills or experience to get a green job there is some good news. One of the greatest features of the internet age is the transformation of learning. Gone are the days when only a tiny handful of people acquired professional qualifications and university degrees. It is relatively inexpensive and often free to take green microcredentials and training courses, alongside apprenticeships and courses provided by education and training boards, SOLAS and higher education bodies.
There is also an exciting range of free online training courses that cover everything from sustainable finance to design thinking and supply chain management.
Despite the surge in demand for green skills however, LinkedIn reports that younger people (Gen Z) and women still find themselves locked out of the green job market. This is partly because companies are still looking for workers with the traditional skills largely in male-dominated domains and see green skills as an add-on rather than new careers in their own right.
And encouraging though LinkedIn’s data is, somehow the focus on the energy transition as a technical one leaves out a range of skills and perspectives that are also essential to a sustainable future.
What the technical approach leaves out, for example, is a focus on ecological literacy, on systems thinking, and creativity. Then there is the practical job of repairing and restoring nature, never mind essential and pro-social activities like growing food. Not all green jobs require gadgets and fancy IT skills: in my opinion if you care for children or drive a bus you are already doing a green job.
Ultimately we will need to question the underlying paradigms which are responsible for planetary destruction in the first place. Creating green jobs in a profoundly brown world just won’t be enough to repair the damage. To be truly sustainable we will have to embrace new ways of thinking and working that align our economy with planetary boundaries as well as meet the wellbeing needs of people. That points to a paradigm of sufficiency rather than green growth, in which the idea of doing less is seen as more.
Sadhbh O’Neill is a climate and environmental researcher and part-time lecturer at TU Dublin.
