The Green Edge Top Reads – January 2025
The Green Edge Top Reads collection: a key points analysis of our top reads of the month.
Our January Top Reads highlight the critical intersections between environmental sustainability, workforce transformation, and systemic change. Spanning topics from green jobs and skills development to climate risk management and economic policy reform, these publications reveal the urgent need for bold, inclusive, and collaborative action to address climate challenges. Common themes include the rapid transition to a green economy, the imperative for reskilling millions of workers, and the necessity of integrating equity and social justice into climate solutions. Together, they underscore the opportunities for innovation, resilience, and prosperity in tackling the dual crises of climate change and inequality, offering actionable insights for policymakers, businesses, and communities alike.
Read The Green Edge’s take on these Top Reads and all the other publications we reviewed last month in The Green Edge Take.
Green Jobs Skills and Enterprises
Author/Publisher: Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO)
Date: December 2023
Focus: Explores opportunities for creating green jobs and enterprises in the green economy with an emphasis on youth, women, and people with disabilities.
Category: Skills and Workforce Development
Tags: Green Skills, Circular Economy, Youth Employment, Women Empowerment, Just Transition, Sustainability
Summary: This comprehensive report by VSO delves into the intersection of climate change adaptation and green job creation. It highlights the role of vocational education and enterprises in driving sustainability while addressing socio-economic inequalities. Core recommendations include adopting people-centered green skills, supporting carbon literacy, and integrating circular economy principles in various sectors.
Key Findings:
Green jobs span sectors like climate-resilient agriculture, waste management, and renewable energy.
There is a growing need for green skills that intersect with tackling inequality and poverty.
Inclusive frameworks must focus on women, youth, and people with disabilities.
Challenges Identified:
Insufficient talent pipeline and training ecosystems for green transitions globally.
Systemic barriers to inclusive participation in green jobs, especially in informal sectors.
Recommendations:
Invest in green curriculum development and training for technical and vocational education (TVET).
Promote carbon literacy, upskilling programs, and circular economy practices.
Establish partnerships for just and equitable transitions
The Green Edge Take: This is a gem, written for the VSO by a consultant to advise it on further development. For us there are three reports in here: one for the VSO to aid its decision making; one about international development and green skills and jobs; and finally, a review of key materials on green jobs and skills. For an introduction to the topic, this report is well worth delving into and is well illustrated.
Net Zero Careers Accelerator White Paper
Author/Publisher: GoodPeople
Date: 2024
Focus: Addresses the UK’s green skills gap through cross-sector collaboration under the Net Zero Careers Accelerator initiative.
Category: Skills and Workforce Development
Tags: Net Zero, Green Skills, Workforce Development, Education Partnerships, Social Value
Summary: This white paper outlines the UK’s critical need to bridge the green skills gap. It emphasizes collaborative approaches involving businesses, local authorities, and education providers to unlock job opportunities and align training programs with net zero requirements. The report identifies barriers and proposes tools like job mapping and reverse mentoring to build a robust green economy workforce.
Key Findings:
Green skills shortages threaten net-zero targets; 70% of employers face talent challenges.
Cross-sector collaboration is critical to unlock job opportunities and improve recruitment pathways.
Recommendations:
Implement job mapping tools to identify and address skills shortages.
Foster industry-education partnerships to align training with industry demands.
Develop inclusive hiring frameworks to engage marginalized communities in green roles.
Highlights:
The initiative engages housing associations, local authorities, and businesses, covering over 658,000 residents.
The Green Edge Take: An emerging and growing scheme in London to work along the whole supply chain to provide skills for retrofitting (initially), which means getting housing operators (e.g. housing associations), repair and maintenance construction companies, education and training providers, property developers, local authorities etc. together. One theme we see here is a form of collaboration and co-operation which says the skills challenges have multiple owners, and there is a need to work together to solve them. We can see this approach being relevant to other emerging green sectors (nature / forestry / ecosystems management, waste management, repair and recycling, etc.) and applicable across the UK.
Accelerating Together: How the UK Workforce Can Get Net Zero Done
Author/Publisher: Bain & Company
Date: January 2024
Focus: Examines the workforce implications of the UK’s transition to net zero.
Category: Labour Market
Tags: Reskilling, Workforce Transformation, Net Zero Transition, Green Economy
Summary: This report emphasizes the unprecedented scale of reskilling required for the UK’s net zero transition. It projects significant changes across industries, with four million workers needing retraining by 2030. The report calls for coordinated efforts between government and businesses to build training ecosystems capable of delivering on net zero goals.
Key Findings:
Net-zero transition will impact 4 million workers, requiring reskilling at unprecedented speed.
Green jobs, like heat pump installers, offer significant growth potential with higher wages.
Challenges Identified:
Geographic mismatch between green job opportunities and workforce location.
Inadequate training capacity and outdated reskilling pathways.
Recommendations:
Create regional reskilling hubs and incentivize green job training.
Foster public-private partnerships to scale training ecosystems.
Address workforce churn in regions like Scotland and the Midlands.
The Green Edge Take: This is certainly worth reading as it uses ONS data to look at the scale of new green jobs and reskilling needs. It seems that around 500,000 new roles and 4mn workers need reskilling of various levels. Shows the real value of adopting a workforce approach and looking at the new total green skills requirements across the whole labour market, and the flows required over the next 5-10 years. It would be good to see this study built upon by the Office for Clean Energy Jobs.
Net Zero and the Labour Market: Evidence from the UK
Author/Publisher: Anna Valero, LSE Public Policy Review
Date: March 2024
Focus: Analyzes the impact of net zero policies on the UK labor market.
Category: Labour Market
Tags: Green Jobs, Labour Market, Skills Development, Inclusivity
Summary: Using an occupational lens, this study examines how net zero policies reshape employment in the UK. It reveals that green jobs typically offer higher wages and require advanced skills but remain less accessible to underrepresented groups. The report advocates for inclusive training programs and targeted interventions in impacted sectors.
Key Findings:
Green jobs account for 17% of UK employment, offering higher wages and skills intensity.
Transition impacts vary by sector, with high-emission industries facing significant changes.
Challenges Identified:
Green jobs remain inaccessible to underrepresented groups.
Limited alignment between existing skills and emerging green roles.
Recommendations:
Develop inclusive green skills programs to expand access for marginalized workers.
Establish regional initiatives to address disparities in green job distribution.
The Green Edge Take: This paper focuses on the UK and summarises findings from an occupational approach, which classifies jobs as being green when they involve new tasks or skills required by the transition to net zero, or when they are likely to see increased demand due to the transition. It sets out evidence that green jobs have the potential to be good jobs, requiring higher skills and paying well. Overall, this is largely a story of change in existing jobs and sectors; very few jobs will be phased out. The transition and its impacts on the labour market will be difficult in specific sectors and places, requiring targeted programmes and broader skills policies to ensure that net zero can not only be delivered, but delivered in an inclusive way. A good read and probably best read alongside the report by the Resolution Foundation on Net Zero Jobs – The Impact of the Transition to Net Zero on the UK Labour Market (June 2022).
Future of Jobs Report 2025
Author/Publisher: World Economic Forum
Date: January 2025
Focus: Explores global labor market transformations driven by macrotrends and technological advancements.
Category: Labour Market
Tags: Workforce Trends, Green Transition, Digital Skills, Reskilling
Summary: This report anticipates significant labor market disruptions by 2030, driven by trends like AI, digital access, and the green transition. It identifies green jobs as a key growth area, with roles in renewable energy, environmental engineering, and electric vehicles topping demand. Effective reskilling is highlighted as critical to realizing these opportunities inclusively.
Key Findings:
Green jobs like renewable energy engineers are among the fastest-growing globally.
Two-fifths of skill sets will require transformation by 2030 to meet evolving job demands.
Challenges Identified:
Persistent skill gaps and uneven access to training remain barriers to workforce readiness.
Economic uncertainty and demographic shifts exacerbate labor market disparities.
Future Outlook:
Demand for green skills, AI proficiency, and adaptability will dominate workforce strategies.
Global reskilling initiatives need to prioritize inclusivity to harness full economic potential.
The Green Edge Take: The green transition is a core part of the trends shaping the future of work and jobs (pages 15-16, 30-31), and the features of the UK labour market (pages 212-213) are neatly summarised here. For anyone wanting to see the global context of the green transition and its scale and ubiquity, there are some rich materials to be drawn upon here.
Cities Outlook 2025
Author/Publisher: Centre for Cities
Date: January 2025
Focus: Analyzes economic trends and regional inequalities in UK cities.
Category: Devolution and Regional Development
Tags: Urban Development, Regional Inequality, Economic Policy
Summary: This annual report reveals persistent wage disparities across UK cities, emphasizing the role of urban areas in driving national productivity. It calls for bold devolution and industrial strategies to bridge regional divides and stimulate inclusive economic growth.
Key Findings:
Urban wage growth correlates with the productivity of export-oriented industries.
The Greater South East outperforms other regions, perpetuating economic inequalities.
Challenges Identified:
Stagnant wages and regional inequalities hinder national economic progress.
Underperforming cities fail to capitalize on export-sector opportunities.
Recommendations:
Leverage devolution to empower cities with decision-making capabilities.
Align industrial strategy with regional growth plans to boost urban productivity.
The Green Edge Take: 2025 is going to be an important year for growth policies around planning, devolution, and industrial strategy. So, this report provides a benchmark against which these policy initiatives can measured. Net zero businesses feature as they are part of the “cutting edge economy” which are used to rank and evaluate individual cities. Regional development and developing the economies of all parts of the UK will take several decades (probably 5 or 6) based on the experiences of Germany.
Planetary Solvency: Finding Our Balance with Nature
Authors: Institute and Faculty of Actuaries, University of Exeter
Date: January 2025
Focus: Proposes a risk management framework for maintaining planetary health and human prosperity.
Category: Pot Pourri
Tags: Climate Risk, Planetary Boundaries, Global Policy, Resilience
Summary: This report emphasizes the urgent need for systemic risk management to address climate and ecological crises. It introduces the RESILIENCE principles and recommends integrating these into global policymaking to mitigate cascading risks and avoid tipping points.
Key Findings:
Current policies underestimate climate tipping points and systemic risks.
Urgent action is needed to avert catastrophic impacts like food insecurity and mass migration.
Recommendations:
Implement the RESILIENCE framework for integrated risk management.
Establish annual planetary risk assessments to inform global decision-making.
Prioritize ecological restoration and decarbonization.
The Green Edge Take: A sobering piece of work that finds climate change and nature-driven risks have been and are hugely underestimated. The finding that sticks with us is that global economic growth could plummet by 50% between 2070 and 2090 from the catastrophic shocks of climate change unless immediate action is taken to decarbonise and restore nature. Admittedly this is the worst -case scenario, but nevertheless it makes any cost-benefit analysis of climate mitigation and adaptation look relatively cheap in comparison.
How we sold our future. The failure to fight climate change
Polity Press, December 2024.
Link (Book)
The Green Edge Take: This powerful, well-written book seeks to address one major question: why do societies continue headlong on a path toward destruction of the natural environment, without which human civilisation could not exist? The author argues that we must imperatively prepare our societies for a world that is 2.5 degrees warmer and find more effective ways to speed up the energy transition. Key in making the transition is a major shift in the balance of incentives and power: we need climate-friendlier business models that are profitable. One statistic sticks with us: 88% of the damage from global warming is expected to occur in the Global South—but that does not restrict catastrophic events occurring elsewhere.
Decent Work in Nature-Based Solutions
Authors/Publisher: International Labour Organization (ILO), UNEP, IUCN
Date: December 2024
Focus: Highlights job creation opportunities in scaling nature-based solutions (NbS).
Category: Nature and Biodiversity
Tags: Nature-Based Solutions, Green Jobs, Workforce Development, Ecosystem Restoration
Summary: This report estimates that scaling NbS could create up to 32 million jobs globally by 2030, with significant opportunities in low-income regions. It emphasizes the need for skill development and inclusive workforce policies to maximize the socioeconomic benefits of NbS projects.
Key Findings:
Scaling NbS could generate 32 million jobs globally by 2030.
Sectors like forestry and ecosystem restoration hold significant potential.
Challenges Identified:
Workforce development in NbS lags, particularly in low-income regions.
Inclusive frameworks are necessary to involve marginalized groups.
Recommendations:
Invest in skills training and policy support for NbS-related jobs.
Promote equity and access in workforce development initiatives
The Green Edge Take: A thorough and detailed study covering skills and occupations core to nature-based solutions. The surprising finding is the scale of employment potential each year (400,000-1.1mn) when viewed over a 10-year period. Well work a read and we wonder how the core of this work could be applied to Western agriculture and nature.