Green Skills Reports Roundup, Jan-22
Beginning this month, we highlight a selection of green skills-related reports that have caught our eye.
Beginning this month, we highlight a selection of new reports related to green skills that have caught our eye, along with our thoughts on their significance.
Since this is the first in the series, we’re also catching up a little with a couple of reports from the last year or so that we think will be most significant in the longer term.
Closing the UK’s green skills gap
Green Alliance Policy Insight, January 2022.
This report notes that green skills are central to both levelling up and economic growth, so the Government must start from a point of integration. Current and forthcoming legislation on lifetime skills and the UK Infrastructure Bank (UKIB) must give due regard to environmental goals, while environmental legalisation must do the same for skills.
However, to ensure the economy does not return to sluggish growth after the recovery, and green jobs do not only stay in the South East but spread across the country, ministers should design and implement a new comprehensive green skills programme, supported in three ways:
Industry: a UK wide body and framework for green jobs, to match supply and demand regionally and across sectors; local skills plans that link businesses with universities and colleges and reflect local dynamics; a requirement for sector boards to collect frequent, granular labour market intelligence for the green transition; and a super-deduction for training, providing 130 per cent tax relief for investment in employees’ green skills.
Institutions: new green courses, using the new framework to understand the landscape of the future workforce; and environmental modules in other courses as the new skill requirements are not confined to green jobs.
Individuals: a public facing campaign to increase knowledge about green skills and their benefits, complementing efforts by industry; support for workers while they retrain, in the form of loans, grants or maintenance payments; and use existing programmes to boost green skills, such as Kickstart and the digital skills bootcamp model.
Identifying Green Occupations in London
Greater London Authority Working Paper 99, January 2022.
The report uses an O*NET-based classification (Occupational Information Network database produced by the US Department of Labor) of green jobs to identify occupations that are likely to be affected by the transition to a low-carbon circular (‘greener’) economy and found:
There were 1.5 million jobs in occupations affected by greening in London in 2019
The rate of jobs growth in occupations affected by greening has been higher than for non-green occupations in recent years
The number of London-based jobs in green occupations is highest in the managerial, professional, and associate professional and technical groups
The sectors with the highest shares of jobs in green occupations also tend to be relatively high emitting (electricity and gas, construction, manufacturing, and transport and logistics)
The transition to a greener economy will have wide-ranging and variable impacts on skills and training requirements
The quality of jobs is likely to vary between different green occupational categories
The proportion of workers who participate in job-related training in green occupations is lower than for non-green occupations
There is scope to increase the diversity of employment in occupations affected by greening
Net Zero Roadmap. Getting to Net Zero by 2050 – or sooner
Net Zero All-Party Parliamentary Group, December 2021.
The Net Zero APPG and stakeholders welcome the Government’s stated commitment to net zero emissions by 2050, but are profoundly concerned about the lack of immediate action, debate, planning and investment commensurate with the scale of the challenge. On skills, the APPG see there is a need to develop an expansive and ambitious Covid-19 green recovery package that is guided by economics, and focusses on green job creation and workforce reskilling especially in disadvantaged areas. Priority should be given to energy efficiency, incentives to scale-up green technology and infrastructure development, including renewable and firm-level zero-carbo energy, energy storage, low emissions heating, clean industry; and, maximise local impact through co-ordination with local government and industry.
Green Jobs and Skills in London: cross-London report
WPI Economics and Institute for Employment Studies for the South London Partnership, West London Alliance, Central London Forward, and Local London, November 2021.
This report examines the potential scale and nature of green jobs across London in the coming decades. Further reports focus specifically on each of London’s four sub-regions, also providing more detail on London’s Boroughs.
There are three sectors which represent more that eight in ten (82%) of total London green jobs. These are: green finance (50,700), representing 22% of total green jobs in London; homes and buildings (58,200), representing 25% of total green jobs in London; and, power (82,900), representing 35% of total green jobs in London. In comparison with all employment in London, skilled craft roles are heavily over-represented (19% of green jobs, compared with 6% of all jobs), and managerial and associate professional/technical jobs (technicians) are also over-represented.
Green sectors draw in a relatively high proportion of workers from other sectors each year, and fewer entrants from full-time education. This suggests that attracting people already in work, and re-skilling them where necessary, will be a more important source of new skills for the sector than attracting those leaving full-time education. Taking the broad education and training provision and demand for green skills suggests there is an urgent need to increase education provision in subjects and courses that are relevant for green jobs, and to support those already in the labour market in non-green jobs to retrain, and upskill to acquire the skills that they need, in order to meet the rapid expansion of the sector over the coming decades.
The green employment and skills transformation
CEDEFOP, 2021
Over the entire forecast decade, employment with the implementation of the European Green Deal (EGD) is higher than without it. The expected 1.2% additional employment growth up to 2030 associated with meeting the EGD targets, translates into approximately 2.5 million additional jobs in the EU. The fluctuation in additional employment growth at EU and sectoral level is likely a result of life cycles in implementing new technology. Expected additional employment growth in more pronounced in 2021-22, slows down in the middle of the decade and then accelerates from 2026 onwards.
‘Winning sectors’ concern water supply and waste management (triggered by the focus on circular economy), utilities (through increased recycling activities) and electricity supply (through increased demand for renewable energy). Other sectors that are quite strongly impacted include manufacturing of appliances and electrical equipment (as for the renewable electricity generation sector, or more energy efficient appliances), construction, and the sectors that link to these via supply chain. EGD implementation is expected to increase employment in several service sectors, such as engineering and administration.
The take-off of the circular economy is expected to change all processes across manufacturing sectors. In electronics this creates some additional employment growth by 2030 compared to the baseline scenario. In many other manufacturing sectors, employment changes are expected to be mild, with dynamics more likely to reflect intra-sectoral job-to-job mobility and up- or reskilling needs, rather than employment flows between sectors.
The EGD scenario urges policy-makers to pay attention to high-skilled occupations involved in developing green technologies, such as scientists and researchers. Although relatively small in terms of employment share, these occupations are indispensable for achieving the green transition. The scenario also forecasts increasing employment in occupations that support such work or greening more generally, such as administration professionals, chief executives, senior officials and legislators, administrative and commercial managers, and information and communication technology professionals. The significant increase in jobs for high skilled workers in the computing sector clearly shows digital skills not enable the digital transition, but also the green transformation.
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