In 2022, YouGov research reported that 64% of British consumers do not understand what “green skills” means. So while the need for green skills has never been more important, it seems that they are still far down the list of priorities. Why is this? And what can we do about it?
Green skills are broader than just building wind turbines
Shortly after COP26, I spoke with a group of business leaders about how sustainable business has changed over the past decade and what would stop us from hitting our 2030 and 2050 carbon targets. It was generally agreed that many of the old barriers to sustainable business have disappeared. As Wunderkind’s ‘CMO State of the Union’ report found, cost of living increases has led to people wanting more products that help them be more sustainable rather than less. Thanks to the dramatic fall in the price of renewables, with IRENA reporting that solar costs dropped 13% in 2021 and onshore wind 15%, and the volatility of gas prices in 2022, cost is no longer the issue it was. Green energy is demonstrably the answer to the energy trilemma of low-carbon, secure and affordable energy.
However, this has not translated into carbon reduction, with global emissions in 2022 predicted to be higher than ever before. I was reminded of a talk by Ian Marchant, the outgoing CEO of SSE and President of the Energy Institute, in 2013. He challenged the view that solving the energy trilemma would be sufficient for us to achieve a sustainable future. We require more than affordability, security of supply and decarbonisation; we need to solve the shortage of green skills: it is an energy quadrilemma rather than a trilemma.
The problem is that green skills are more than knowing how to build EV batteries, create solar arrays or install wind farms. To achieve the industrial transformation needed for net zero cannot be left to a few. Every employee needs to play a part.
The business case to develop green skills
Green skills are increasingly demanded by employees and employers alike. Indeed, as IEMA found in their 2022 survey, 75% of senior sustainability professionals say that all jobs will require green skills by 2050.
Embracing the need for green skills for every employee will increasingly be necessary for staff recruitment, retention and motivation, as well as competitiveness. Businesses that embrace the challenge are likely to be the leaders in the decades to come.
Is this an unsurmountable challenge?
Does this mean that every employee needs to learn about emissions scopes and carbon sequestration or standards like EN IEC 62941:2020?
For me, this would be a fool’s errand. Our aim as business leaders is not to make every job a green job but to enable every person to thrive in the new green economy. A useful analogy may be the way that businesses address risk, quality, safeguarding or a myriad of other requirements that have become standard business practice – while I may not be a health and safety officer, I am aware of how my job impacts other people’s safety, including my own, and that affects the way I work.
Practically, this means treating green skills as intrinsic to every employee’s role.
Three steps to action now
Firstly, develop a baseline. The need for greenskills will vary depending on the level of sustainable experience of the workforce and the reputation of the business for sustainability but is likely to mean, at a minimum, reassessing induction processes and including training on the carbon impact of the business and how each employee can make a difference.
Secondly, create a system that will keep your employee’s skills up to date. As the world of sustainability is moving swiftly, and the new technologies and techniques needed to keep business competitive seem to be rolling out daily, skills need to be kept up to date. For many companies, the principles of continual improvement are already embedded, but for others, this could mean a radical reshaping of how staff skills are seen. The good news is that the wider business benefits are also clear. As Forbe’s Five Fundamentals of Employee Satisfaction demonstrates, skills learning is fundamental to an engaged workforce, and the benefits of keeping staff up to date with sustainable skills are huge.
Thirdly, prioritise the key roles that need training and mentoring to develop specific green skills. This may mean introducing training on circular product design, ethical procurement or developing those creative skills that will enable the more challenging problems to be resolved.
