The Green Edge Top Reads – May 2025
The Green Edge Top Reads collection: a key points analysis of our top reads of the month.
From foundational skills to industrial transformation, our May Top Reads track the arc of a just and resilient transition through the lens of work, workplace, and workforce. The selected publications range from high-level mappings—like the Green Skills Map and ESCOE’s classification of green jobs in the UK—to practitioner reflections and policy toolkits aimed at bridging ambition and action on the ground. Together, they surface recurring themes: the need to recognise green skills as core life skills, the importance of data and definitions in shaping effective policy, and the urgency of coordinated investment in workforce transition and industrial adaptation. Whether it’s the CCC warning that the UK’s adaptation efforts are lagging, or the stark message from the Absolute Zero report that industrial processes must be reimagined without offsets, the signal is clear: futureproofing growth demands that we rethink how we train, support, and empower people across every sector and region.
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 Skills Map
Author/publisher: greenskills.org
Publication Date: March 2025
Focus: A thematic taxonomy of green knowledge domains and activities across environmental, agricultural, water, and energy sectors.
Category: Skills and Employment
Tags: Green Skills, Skills Intelligence, Environmental Awareness, Green Economy, Career Development, Education and Training
Summary: This visual mapping resource identifies hundreds of green skill areas across 19 environmental domains, ranging from soil and air quality to marine conservation and smart agriculture. It showcases how technical, environmental, and ethical competencies are clustered by sector, serving as a foundational tool for curriculum developers, career advisors, and workforce planners to frame green skills as life skills for a sustainable future.
Key Findings
Green skills align strongly with life and career capabilities such as critical thinking, systems thinking, and adaptability.
Many green competencies are transferable across sectors (e.g. project management, stakeholder engagement).
Core Skill Clusters Identified
Foundational skills: Communication, digital literacy, teamwork.
Technical skills: Renewable energy operation, environmental monitoring.
Transformative skills: Systems thinking, change management, innovation.
Implications
Emphasises that green skills are not niche but foundational for the future economy.
Calls for broader access to these capabilities through general education and lifelong learning.
The Green Edge Take: If you only click through to one item this month, take a look at this Green Skills Map. It’s a major step forward and breaks green skills down into 11 core areas, 54 sub-areas and 243 green skills clusters. The eleven core skill areas are: enabling, natural capital, food system, circular economy, carbon market, green data and finance, green resource, renewable energy, green grid, built environment, and green mobility. HolonIQ kicked off the process and it was added to through an open-source approach to developing the map. If this is of interest, take a look at Future17 developed by the University of Exeter (17 refers to the SDGs), and the wider Global Skills Week event run in Washington DC in March 2025.
Research on Green Jobs: Reflections with Practitioners
Author/publisher: Sustainable Economies Research Group, UWE
Publication Date: March 2025
Focus: Practitioners’ perspectives on research priorities for green jobs in the UK.
Category: Labour Market
Tags: Green Jobs, Skills Gaps, Just Transition, Metrics, Research Gaps, Employment Equity
Summary: This mixed-methods paper reviews green jobs literature and complements it with practitioner insights from focus groups. Key recommendations include developing robust green job metrics, linking research to workforce planning, and addressing structural inequalities in access. Practitioners called for more applied, socially attuned research that could feed into employment and training strategies, especially in the context of a just transition.
Key Themes
Practitioners highlight ambiguity in defining green jobs and worry about inconsistent terminology across sectors.
There is growing demand for multidisciplinary skills, particularly blending sustainability with digital and social capacities.
Challenges Identified
Difficulty in tracking green job trends due to poor classification and reporting systems.
Regional inequalities in job creation and training provision.
Recommendations
Increase co-design of training with local employers and communities.
Strengthen feedback loops between policy, labour market intelligence, and on-the-ground experience.
The Green Edge Take: A helpful and comprehensive review of the literature, highlighting the focus of much current research on net job creation. Goes on to identify the need for future research on green jobs metrics, research informing employment and skills plans, just transition and green jobs, and barriers to green jobs and the green economy. A couple of illustrations developed in this paper we think will find their way into many presentations.
Green Jobs: A Literature Review
Author/publisher: Bucharest University of Economic Studies
Publication Date: June 2022
Focus: Systematic analysis of scholarly work on green jobs from 2017 to 2022.
Category: Labour Market
Tags: Green Economy, Sustainable Development, Circular Economy, Employment, Skills Policy
Summary: This review maps the evolution and thematic clusters within green jobs research. It identifies convergence around the UNEP/ILO definition and links to broader economic concepts like sustainable growth and the European Green Deal. Core research themes include green job creation, public policy support, work-life balance, and the role of local government. The study reinforces the cross-cutting relevance of green employment strategies.
Highlights
Green jobs are defined broadly in literature: from those in renewables to roles contributing indirectly to environmental goals.
A lack of consensus on metrics creates difficulty in tracking and promoting green jobs consistently.
Gaps in the Literature
Insufficient exploration of justice and equity dimensions.
Limited integration of qualitative insights from jobholders and communities affected.
Recommendations
Greater alignment between academic studies and policy practice.
Call for more intersectional, localised studies on green employment dynamics.
The Green Edge Take: What does the term and concept ‘green jobs’ mean? Quite a bit, according to the reviewed literature on sustainable development, green economy, circular economy, welfare economy, the European Green Pact, energy, renewable energy, economic development and employment. This is all brought together in Figure 1: Network of key term associations. Overall, the review highlights the need for definitions and metrics we can all work to and use to assess progress and development across the world.
Green Jobs in the UK: ESCOE and ONS Evidence
Author/publisher: ESCoE and ONS
Publication Date: October 2024
Focus: Green labour market segmentation and equity impacts in the UK.
Category: Labour Market
Tags: Green Jobs, Pay Inequality, Labour Market Data, Just Transition, Inclusion, Administrative Data
Summary: Using linked administrative data from 2011–2018, this report assesses who benefits from green jobs in the UK. White, male, full-time workers in non-unionised, small, or foreign-owned firms are most likely to be employed in green occupations. A pay premium is evident, yet gender and ethnic pay gaps persist even within green roles. Findings point to the need for intersectional just transition policies.
Key Findings
Green jobs make up a growing but still modest share of UK employment.
Major growth in sectors like renewables and energy efficiency.
Data Improvements
The report proposes a classification framework to better map green economy roles.
Suggests moving beyond ‘occupation’ codes to task-level analysis.
Future Outlook
Predicts strong demand for retrofit specialists, energy managers, and environmental data analysts.
Notes a need to align training programmes and industrial policy.
The Green Edge Take: Looks at the period 2011-2018 and finds that individuals are more likely to work in green occupations if they are white, male, full-time, are not in a trade union, and work in SMEs or foreign-owned businesses. While we think the biases (inequities) are probably still evident in the ‘green labour force’, given the growth in the number of green jobs it would be worth running this analysis again through to 2024 and 2025 .
Greener Workplaces Toolkit
Author/publisher: Trades Union Congress (TUC)
Publication Date: December 2024
Focus: Supporting UK union representatives in advancing workplace climate action and just transition.
Category: Just Transition
Tags: Workplace Transition, Green Reps, Union Bargaining, Skills Planning, Climate Justice, Worker Voice
Summary: This hands-on toolkit provides union reps with checklists, case studies, and model agreements to help negotiate greener, fairer workplaces. It includes sections on building retrofits, skills foresight, transport planning, and nature protection. The TUC frames climate and nature crises as union issues, and argues for worker voice in shaping transition plans. The toolkit also supports freelancers and reps in sectors facing rapid change.
Toolkit Features
Practical guidance for employers, unions, and employees to green workplaces collaboratively.
Includes checklists, best practices, and case studies from diverse sectors.
Recommendations
Embed environmental reps into organisational structures.
Use workplace action plans to deliver emissions cuts and boost engagement.
Success Factors
Strong management-union collaboration.
Transparency and shared ownership of sustainability goals.
The Green Edge Take: The TUC should be congratulated on developing this toolkit, which we see as one that could be used in any workplace and by anyone (not just trade union reps). Full of case studies, useful checklists, sector and issue reviews, and key facts—see Table 1 which lists the number of jobs at risk due to the net zero transition (direct and indirect losses). We could also see the toolkit being used as a teaching resource, perhaps complementing OCR’s new Level 3 Certificate Sustainability.
Estimating Labour Market Transitions and Skills Investment
Author/publisher: European Commission
Publication Date: March 2025
Focus: Assessing the labour market impact of the green transition and required training investment.
Category: Labour Market
Tags: Skills Forecasting, Labour Mobility, Net Zero, Workforce Planning, Social Investment, Renewable Energy
Summary: This study presents data-driven estimates of job flows and training costs linked to green transition sectors. It finds stable employment in energy-intensive sectors and highlights underinvestment in training. Meeting EU renewables goals may require 130,000+ skilled workers and €1.4 billion in upskilling by 2030. Gender and sectoral disparities shape transition risks and opportunities.
Key Findings
Projects major transitions in the labour market due to decarbonisation, digitalisation, and demographic shifts.
Up to 2.5 million workers may need reskilling by 2035.
Sectoral Insights
High-impact sectors include construction, manufacturing, transport, and energy.
Health and care also affected due to climate-related demand shifts.
Policy Recommendations
Greater investment in adult learning and modular training.
Proactive support for local areas facing structural employment risk.
The Green Edge Take: Taking the transforming sectors (energy, mining and quarrying, construction, manufacturing, and waste) as the core of the analysis, two parts stand out for us: first, the movement of workers between the transforming (energy intensive) sectors (there is a good graphic showing this, see Figure 6, page 16); and second, the levels of investment to support the skills development for the growing wind and solar industries (here a single table summarises the scale and costs, Table 1, page 26).
Futureproofing Growth through the Modern Industrial Strategy
Author/publisher: Aldersgate Group
Publication Date: May 2025
Focus: Aligning the UK’s modern industrial strategy with net zero, nature restoration, and long-term growth.
Category: Industrial Strategy
Tags: Net Zero Growth, Industrial Policy, Green Economy, Clean Tech, Financial Services, Digital Transformation
Summary: This briefing argues that sustainable growth and decarbonisation are not competing goals but twin engines of prosperity. It urges the UK Government to embed net zero across industrial strategy—targeting priority sectors like clean energy, AI, and life sciences. Evidence shows green economy jobs outperform national averages in value-add. The report calls for coherent regulation, targeted incentives, and cross-sector collaboration to unlock private investment and boost resilience.
Highlights
Climate resilience is an economic competitiveness issue, not just an environmental one.
Business leaders call for consistent policy frameworks and better regulatory foresight.
Key Priorities
Reform capital allowances to incentivise clean investment.
Accelerate planning reforms to unlock green infrastructure deployment.
Recommendations
Embed sustainability into financial reporting.
Build cross-party consensus on industrial transition goals.
The Green Edge Take: The green economy is set to grow from 0.8% of GDP today to around 6% by 2050, so any industrial strategy must embed sustainability across all sectors to future proof growth. This briefing looks across several sectors (advanced manufacturing, financial services, defence, professional and business services, clean energy industries, digital and technology, creative industries, and life sciences) and presents a series of case studies in each one. Skills do get raised, most frequently under financial services.
Progress in Adapting to Climate Change – CCC 2025
Author/publisher: Climate Change Committee
Publication Date: April 2025
Focus: Independent statutory review of the UK Government’s adaptation progress.
Category: Climate Policy
Tags: Climate Risk, Adaptation Planning, Public Services, Resilience, Monitoring and Evaluation
Summary: This stark progress report finds UK adaptation to climate change “inadequate,” with most outcomes scoring poorly. It calls for clearer objectives, better integration across departments, sufficient resourcing, and an effective monitoring framework. The Committee criticises the piecemeal implementation of the Third National Adaptation Programme (NAP3) and urges urgent action to prepare for intensifying climate impacts and cascading system risks.
Key Findings
UK adaptation progress remains too slow despite increasing risks.
Only 5 of 45 adaptation outcomes are on track.
Critical Risks
Heat risk to health and productivity.
Food system disruption from climate shocks.
Infrastructure vulnerability to flooding and extreme weather.
Recommendations
Urgent upgrade of national adaptation plans.
Embed resilience across planning, investment, and regulatory frameworks.
The Green Edge Take: In our view there are five skills message coming from this report. First, a critical shortfall in adaptation skills across government and sectors; second, climate resilience needs to be embedded in workforce training and professional standards; third, data, monitoring, and evaluation skills are urgently needed; fourth, coordination and systems-thinking skills are essential to address interdependencies; and fifth, a skilled workforce is needed to implement adaptation in key sectors like land use, health, and infrastructure. For a useful summary, see Table 1 (pages 13-15) and Figure 1 (page 16). We see very little green.
Absolute Zero: Materials and Manufacturing
Author/publisher: UK FIRES
Publication Date: January 2022
Focus: Material supply chains under an absolute zero scenario
Category: Industry and Manufacturing
Tags: Materials, Absolute Zero, Decarbonisation, Circular Economy
Summary: Focusing on steel, cement, aluminium, and plastics, this report outlines how manufacturing can operate without fossil fuels. It models future scenarios of material use, recycling, and energy substitution, proposing demand reduction, reuse, and electrification strategies. It highlights the critical role of innovation and public procurement in scaling these low-carbon practices.
Challenges Identified
Eliminating emissions from materials like steel, cement, and plastics requires profound industrial transformation.
Current pathways rely heavily on unavailable or uncertain tech (e.g. carbon capture).
Key Recommendations
Prioritise reduction and reuse strategies now (e.g. repair, design for longevity).
Stimulate innovation in low-energy materials and production methods.
Phase out fossil-fuel-based industrial processes by design, not offsets.
Future Outlook
Calls for a “rebuild of the economy around zero emissions,” with materials policy playing a central role
The Green Edge Take: The picture often painted for a net/absolute zero future is all about cost and little about opportunity. This report paints a detailed picture of opportunities across six core themes: electrification, recycling, efficiency, service from goods, new demand for UK manufacturing, and the elimination of process emissions. The total of this opportunity(?) comes to £270bn. If so, a big link is to be made here with the UK Government’s growth agenda.