The Green Edge Top Reads – February 2025
The Green Edge Top Reads collection: a key points analysis of our top reads of the month.
Our February Top Reads bring together a rich and insightful collection of recent reports from influential global institutions, specialised sector leaders, and regional analysts, each focusing on the vital intersection of workforce development, green skills, and climate transition. These publications collectively highlight the urgency of aligning education and vocational training with emerging green economy demands, stressing that successful decarbonisation hinges on targeted investment in human capital, inclusive policies for a just transition, and innovative approaches like task-based skills mapping. They also emphasise that strategic sectoral transformations—in renewable energy, sustainable construction, and building retrofits—offer significant opportunities for job growth and economic resilience. Crucially, achieving these ambitious environmental and economic goals requires coordinated action across public and private sectors, tailored local responses, and strong policy integration, ensuring an equitable and effective transition toward a sustainable future.
Read The Green Edge’s take on these Top Reads and all the other publications we reviewed last month in The Green Edge Take.
UK Skills Revolution
Author/publisher: Lightcast
Publication Date: January 2025
Focus: The report assesses disruptive innovation’s impact on UK labour markets, emphasizing skill transformations necessary for digital and green economic transitions.
Category: Skills Development
Tags: Workforce Development, Digital Transformation, Green Economy, AI Adoption, Training Reform, Economic Growth
Summary: This report highlights a rapid shift in the UK's job market, driven by automation and digital technologies, and the critical need for a skills revolution. Emerging green and digital jobs require widespread reskilling and upskilling, particularly in clean energy, sustainability, AI, and digital literacy. Lightcast calls for proactive policy actions and targeted educational investments to bridge growing skill gaps and support a smooth, inclusive transition to the future workforce.
Key Findings:
Significant growth in skills demand driven by green economy expansion and technology integration.
A sharp increase in job opportunities, particularly in renewable energy and sustainable construction sectors.
Increasing need for digital skills integrated with environmental sustainability.
Recommendations:
Expansion of targeted training and education programmes aligned with emerging green job markets.
Promotion of lifelong learning and continuous professional development to address skills gaps.
Enhanced collaboration between educational institutions and industries for skill forecasting and provision.
The Green Edge Take: No doubt Skills England will find this report of great interest. It highlights four sectors of strategic interest: digital, green, housebuilding and construction, and life sciences. The green part of the report (pages 10-11) shows the largely greening of roles rather them being wholly green (of the top 15 roles identified from their job postings dataset shows 4 are green, 11 are greening). We see this analysis as one to build on during 2025 as Skills England starts to fully function.
Navigating the Green Transition: Building Green Skills for a Sustainable Workforce
Author/publisher: World Bank
Publication Date: October 2024
Focus: Analysis of the global workforce implications resulting from climate policies and the adoption of green skills.
Category: Sustainability
Tags: Green Economy, Green Transition, Sustainability, Climate Resilience, Workforce Development, Policy Reform
Summary: This World Bank report emphasizes green skills as crucial for transitioning economies towards sustainability and achieving climate goals. It provides frameworks for identifying, measuring, and scaling green skills globally, noting significant gaps between demand and availability, especially in emerging economies. Recommendations include robust policy frameworks, incentives for private-sector collaboration, and targeted skill-building initiatives to accelerate inclusive green growth.
Key Findings:
Globally growing demand for green skills, notably renewable energy technology, sustainable agriculture, and circular economy competencies.
Skills shortages noted as significant barriers in achieving environmental and climate goals.
Challenges Identified:
Limited access to quality training in developing countries.
Misalignment between educational curricula and labour market needs.
Recommendations:
Strategic investment in vocational education and training programmes tailored to green skills.
International collaboration to develop and share best practices in green skills training.
Policy incentives for businesses adopting environmentally friendly technologies and practices.
The Green Edge Take: An excellent briefing paper containing core definitions and directing us to international pieces of work on green skills. Shows a set of priority reports with a longer reading list (a bit like The Green Edge). For those thinking of giving a lecture on green skills, this short document would make an excellent handout. What we particularly like (and we would expect this from the World Bank) is the international aspects, taking us away from the usual sets of countries.
Employment Outlook and the Green Transition
Author/publisher: OECD
Publication Date: 2024
Focus: Analysis of employment impacts from transitioning to net-zero emissions, addressing labour market adjustments and policy responses.
Category: Employment
Tags: Employment, Green Economy, Net Zero, Workforce Development, Economic Impact, Policy Recommendations
Summary: The OECD’s Employment Outlook analyses labour market impacts of the global green transition, emphasizing employment opportunities in renewable energy, sustainable manufacturing, and green construction. It cautions against transition-related job displacement in fossil-fuel-dependent sectors, recommending comprehensive policies for skills development, labour mobility support, and social protection systems to manage equitable workforce transitions.
Highlights:
Substantial employment growth potential in green transition sectors, offsetting job losses in carbon-intensive industries.
Increased demand for mid-skill technical roles in sustainability-focused jobs.
Challenges Identified:
Unequal regional impacts, with fossil fuel-dependent areas facing disproportionate disruption.
Gender disparities and inequalities in accessing green job opportunities.
Future Outlook:
Policy emphasis on just transition measures including retraining programmes, labour mobility assistance, and social protection frameworks.
Recommendation for enhanced regional policies addressing employment disparities.
The Green Edge Take: This is a report (a book, really) well worth reading in full, as it takes us through the net zero transition and the impact on the labour market and the skills fuelling key roles (about 20% of the workforce are in jobs that will likely expand due to the net zero transition). It also finds that while those people in higher skilled jobs in high-GHG businesses will be able to make the transition to green ones, people who hold relatively low skilled jobs will be most challenged and will need the greatest support.
Green Jobs and the Future of Work
Author/publisher: IMF
Publication Date: September 2024
Focus: Examining how gender equality and STEM education affect the labour market transition to a sustainable, green economy.
Category: Labour Market
Tags: Green Jobs, Labour Market, Gender Equality, STEM Education, Economic Transition, Workforce Development
Summary: The IMF explores labour market implications of the global green transition, highlighting significant opportunities for green job creation alongside potential disruptions in carbon-intensive sectors. It recommends integrated policies combining skills training, fiscal incentives, and supportive social protections to facilitate equitable workforce adjustments, ensuring that benefits of green growth are broadly shared.
Key Findings:
Significant labour market transformation anticipated due to global climate commitments.
Positive net employment effects overall, driven by job creation in renewable energy, efficiency retrofits, and green infrastructure.
Challenges Identified:
Short-term labour market disruptions and structural unemployment risks.
Recommendations:
Comprehensive retraining and upskilling initiatives, prioritising vulnerable workers.
Adoption of targeted fiscal and monetary policies to support employment transition.
Strengthening social safety nets and active labour market policies.
The Green Edge Take: This paper seeks to address four critical questions: how are green jobs distributed across countries, and how have they evolved recently? What is the expected impact of the green transition on the future of work for women and men? How can policymakers support a more inclusive and gender-neutral green transition? How can the supply of STEM workers and gender parity influence the effectiveness of green policies? If these questions are relevant to you, this paper is worth a read.
Doing Green Things: Skills, Reallocation, and the Green Transition
Author/publisher: OECD
Publication Date: June 2023
Focus: Evaluates the skills and labour reallocation necessary for achieving net-zero targets, using a task-based framework.
Category: Skills and Reallocation
Tags: Green Skills, Labour Reallocation, Green Transition, Workforce Development, Automation
Summary: This OECD study underscores the urgent need for proactive skill reallocation strategies as economies transition to greener technologies. It identifies job mobility challenges and proposes comprehensive skill-mapping initiatives, targeted vocational training, and active labour market policies as critical for minimizing disruption and maximizing employment gains in emerging green sectors.
Key Findings:
Effective skills reallocation identified as critical for successful green transition.
Importance of task-based skill assessment over traditional occupation-based frameworks.
Recommendations:
Detailed skills mapping and forecasting at the task level.
Expansion of targeted vocational training addressing specific skills shortages.
Supportive labour market policies fostering greater job mobility and flexibility.
The Green Edge Take: Uses O*NET to examine both the greening of jobs and the transition from brown to green jobs, plus the overall impact of automation (largely AI driven) on the labour market. Also looks at the ease and directness of the transition into a green job from a brown or non-green one, finding that those jobs most impacted by automation are less-equipped to transition to green jobs. The whole nature of a just transition needs to take into account the wider set of waves of change impacting the labour market and jobs.
Why Look at Tasks When Designing Skills Policy for the Green Transition?
Author/publisher: World Bank
Publication Date: April 2024
Focus: Methodological examination of task-based approaches to identifying green occupations and associated skills.
Category: Methodology
Tags: Skills Policy, Green Transition, Labour Market, Task-Based Approach, Methodology
Summary: Offers a robust methodological framework using text analysis to define green tasks and occupations, highlighting its utility in developing targeted skills policies essential for effective labour market transitions in developing economies.
Key Findings:
Traditional job classifications insufficient for accurately identifying skills needed for green transition.
Task-based analysis offers superior precision in determining skills needs.
Recommendations:
Incorporation of task-level analysis into national skills and education policy.
Development of training programmes tailored to specific job tasks rather than broad occupational categories.
The Green Edge Take: Takes O*NET data and extends and build on it, and then tests the approach by applying it to Indonesia. Shows the value of task-based data both in accurately defining green occupations and showing the variations in those occupations.
Green Skills Provision Report 2024 – West of England LSIP
Author/publisher: West of England Combined Authority
Publication Date: 2024
Focus: Mapping existing green skills provision and assessing the demand for these skills in the West of England.
Category: Skills Development
Tags: Green Economy, Green Transition, Skills Shortages, Clean Energy Jobs, Workforce Development
Summary: This report assesses the current state and future demand for green skills across sectors in the West of England, highlighting critical gaps in retrofit, heat pump installation, and renewable energy provision. Despite ambitious regional decarbonization targets, current training capacities severely lag behind what is necessary to achieve net zero by 2030. The report underscores the urgency of rapidly scaling educational offerings in green skills, particularly focusing on vocational and practical skills training to accelerate workforce readiness.
Key Achievements:
Identified significant regional opportunities in green skills provision, particularly in renewable energy and retrofit markets.
Challenges Identified:
Regional skill gaps and shortages impeding local green economic growth.
Recommendations:
Enhanced regional partnerships between local authorities, educational institutions, and industry.
Development of regionally tailored vocational education and training programmes.
Increased funding for local green skills initiatives.
The Green Edge Take: A really helpful approach to categorising green courses and provision into three categories: introductory, intermediate, and in-depth. This is important to provide guidance to people who do not have prior knowledge and are not clear about how many in education classify their courses. The three categories used here fit well with the analysis of net zero reskilling and upskilling needs in the UK we highlighted last month. We suggest a read of this guide alongside Green Skills Provision Report 2024 for the West of England.
United Kingdom’s 2035 Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC)
Author/publisher: UK Government
Publication Date: January 2025
Focus: UK's updated commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 81% from 1990 levels by 2035.
Category: Climate Action
Tags: Net Zero Targets, Climate Policy, Energy Transition, Decarbonization, International Climate Leadership
Summary: The UK’s updated 2035 NDC sets a bold emissions reduction target of 81% below 1990 levels, aligned with the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C goal. Central to achieving this target is an aggressive expansion of renewable energy, comprehensive decarbonization of the electricity grid, and ambitious policies addressing fossil fuel use. The commitment reflects the UK's renewed stance on global climate leadership, with significant international climate finance pledged to assist vulnerable nations and a clear shift away from fossil fuel dependency domestically.
Highlights:
Ambitious emission reduction targets set, significantly accelerating decarbonisation.
Enhanced policy commitments to renewable energy, electrification, and energy efficiency.
Challenges Identified:
Significant investment needs and infrastructure constraints.
Urgent skills and labour market preparation required.
Future Outlook:
Intensified public and private investment mobilization.
Strategic workforce planning for skills alignment with decarbonisation targets.
The Green Edge Take: An important document which gives clarity as to the ambitions of the UK Government. Here we see the just transition (page 24) getting raised along with Skills England, Energy Skills Passport, and Education and Skills (page 48). It’s great to see the core role of Students Organising for Sustainability UK (SOS-UK) being mentioned too as regards education and sustainability. This document impacts the whole net zero transition in the UK across the next ten years.
Achieving Zero-Carbon Buildings: Electric, Efficient and Flexible
Publisher: Energy Transitions Commission (ETC)
Date: February 2025
Focus: Strategic roadmap for achieving zero-carbon buildings through electrification, efficiency, and flexibility.
Category: Buildings Decarbonisation, Energy Transition
Tags: Zero-Carbon Buildings, Electrification, Flexibility, Energy Efficiency
Summary: ETC's report underscores electrification, efficiency, and flexibility as vital to achieving zero-carbon buildings globally by mid-century. Key recommendations involve decarbonising operational energy, minimising embodied carbon in new buildings, and significantly expanding renewable energy capacity. The collective insights of industry leaders reinforce that a sustainable transition is not only feasible but essential for economic growth alongside climate resilience.
Key Findings:
Buildings sector critical for achieving overall decarbonisation goals through electrification and efficiency improvements.
Significant energy productivity potential within buildings through improved energy efficiency and flexibility in electricity demand.
Future Outlook:
Sector-specific analysis on energy productivity improvements ongoing, with detailed strategies due by Q1 2025.
Importance of integrating buildings decarbonisation into broader energy transition frameworks, including grid modernisation and renewable integration.
Recommendations:
Focused policy support for electrification of heating systems and widespread retrofits.
Increased public and private sector investments in building upgrades.
Strengthening regulatory frameworks to mandate higher efficiency standards.
The Green Edge Take: For those looking for an exhaustive and thorough text on both retrofitting homes and commercial buildings. Thankfully also covers cooling, which is often left out of retrofitting talk. We could see this report being used in college or distance-learning courses.