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In an article entitled "Will Green Jobs Become the New Greenwash?", Joel Makower asks the reader:
"Could it be deemed a good thing that everyone is talking about green jobs, even though they don't necessarily know what that means? Or do we need standards and definitions that help us gauge how well we're really doing? "
The semantic question is important to answer, though in no way essential for us to define a "green job." A number of forces are coming together to put under the microscope the true meaning of green jobs, and what potential -- economically, environmentally and socially -- they might hold.
Redefining "Prosperity"
In the United States, Joel's question exposes a unique challenge. In the U.S., we "live to work" as opposed to "work to live." This way of life's being questioned as greater environmental challenges mount and force us to reconsider our long-term priorities and what we're actually working toward. There's a cultural undercurrent that's disrupting, defying and eschewing conventional definitions as we meet our generational challenge: global warming. Is economic success alone enough anymore, or does it lose relevance as the ability to enjoy a comfortable life is threatened by resource shortages, dramatic weather events and increasing insecurity in what the future will look like for people's children and grandchildren?
The potential people see in green jobs -- and perhaps the root of all the hype and potential for greenwashing -- is to finally find balance and synergy between their personal, professional and public lives. "Doing well while doing good," so to speak, is evolving into the next iteration of the American dream.
The Green Jobs Mirage?
Al Gore has famously stated that the coming environmental revolution promises to be bigger than the Industrial Revolution and happen faster than the Technology Revolution. With such a sea change occurring in front of our eyes, it's no wonder we sometimes stare in disbelief: "Is this really happening?" If we can't define it, yet less see it, does it exist?
Consider these facts excerpted from Joel's article:
• The Apollo Alliance's New Apollo Program proposes an investment of $500 billion over 10 years to create 5 million green-collar jobs in a range of industries including renewable energy; energy efficiency; transit and transportation; and research, development and deployment of cutting-edge clean energy technologies.
• The Center for American Progress and the Political Economy Research Institute call for spending $100 billion over two years to create 2 million jobs in building retrofitting, expansion of the transit and freight rail grids, construction of a "smart" electrical grid, wind and solar power, and next-gen biofuels.
• A report prepared by Global Insight for the U.S. Conference of Mayors forecasts that renewable power generation, building retrofitting, and renewable transportation fuels will together generate 1.7 million new jobs by 2018 and another 846,000 related engineering, legal, research and consulting positions. That total jumps to 3.5 million jobs by 2028 and 4.2 million by 2038.
• A study by the American Solar Energy Society asserts that the renewable energy and energy-efficiency industries represented more than 9 million jobs and $1.04 billion in U.S. revenue in 2007, 95 percent in private industry, and could mushroom to as many as 37 million jobs by 2030 -- more than 17 percent of all anticipated U.S. employment.
• A report from the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation predicts that a $50 billion investment in the smart grid over five years "would create approximately 239,000 new or retained U.S. jobs for each of the 5 years on average."
"Proposes," "call for spending," "forecasts," "asserts" and "predicts" all characterize the potential for this sector. But the rhetoric's yet to become a reality, right?
Green jobs do exist -- though at the moment, they're few and far between. However, we need to understand where we are in the life cycle of the green job movement to appreciate why we have such a hard time defining, identifying and getting a green job.
Understanding the Revolution
The Industrial Revolution took decades to become universally obvious -- yet less to garner a name. The technology revolution of the late 20th century took nearly 25 years to be labeled, celebrated, disdained (thanks to the bust of 2001) and finally understood.
Let's get rid of the term "green job"
The use of this term is causing no end of problems. The sooner we start using words that can be tied back to positions that can be counted and verified at actual employers, the better off we all will be.
The term "green jobs" has a very limited function. It creates a buzz about certain environmentally and socially important industries, especially renewable energy, energy efficiency, green building and organics.
It gets people talking about the job creation possibility of certain kinds of investments. The success of the green agenda in the recent stimulus bill (relative to other, equally important social agendas) is a truly astounding measure of just how far we've come in just a few short years.
Defining "green jobs" as an actual category of jobs, however, is a losing game. Each one of the "green" industries above has its own employment structure and workforce needs. Lumping them together under "green" is less than helpful. I would argue that it is actively unhelpful for individual job seekers who use it as a sorting category for job searches only to come away disappointed when they don't find the promised treasure trove of jobs.
Saying that one wants to get a "green job" is roughly at the same level as saying that one wants to "work with people", or "do something that makes a difference". It just doesn't get you very far.
There is no shortage of information about each subsector, and many of the professional and trade associations have good career sections and job boards. It's not all that hard to get the info you need about jobs in a specific sector, once you've selected it. I'm thinking about solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, biofuels, weatherization, insulation, lighting and controls, HVAC, design, recommissioning, auditing, and so forth.
The US Green Building Council site even directs you to an actual list of all of the LEED APs in numerous different categories. If you've honed in on green building as "your" industry, it's easy to use such a list to identify possibilities.
Of course, the so-called green economy goes way beyond energy and buildings. There's fisheries, wildlife, parks and recreation, water quality management, solid waste management/recycling, planning, forestry, land conservation, and so forth.
Each one of these industries is well established and it's not that hard to check out job prospects - good and bad. Some are growing. Some are not.
The problem for job seekers is not at all there are not *enough* "green jobs". There are lots and lots and lots of them.
The problem for individual job seekers remains the same as it's always been. The only job that really matters is the one that's right for you. And that means getting clear about who you are, what you want to do, how badly you want to do it, how creative you can be in job searching/networking, what kind of skills you want to develop, what kind of people you want to work with, how much money you want to make, and how hard you're willing to work at it - even in tough times.
I understand that many people start their job searches with the question - where are the "green" jobs and how do I train for them? Fair enough. My experience is that such a question doesn't really help people very much in the end, and that it can result in much wasted time.
My experience has also been that people who choose careers as electricians, plumbers, HVAC techs, insulation and weatherization workers, lighting and controls technicians, energy auditors, energy engineers, architects, wind turbine installers, (etc.) have certain interests and aptitudes that would make them good candidates for these jobs in a "pre-green" economy and will make them good candidates when the bloom is off of the green rose.
Likewise, people without interest and aptitude for these careers won't suddenly gain such an aptitude just because there is an uptick in job growth in one of these fields, or because we agree to label this or that job as "green".
So, let's feel free to use to terms like "green jobs" and "green economy" as teasers to bring people in the door. Once they're in, we should say "forget about green, let's talk about *you*".
Kevin Doyle
Principal
Green Economy
Co-Chair, New England Clean Energy Council
Workforce Development Group
Superb article
Hello Nick,
First of all I want to say that you've written a fantastic piece discussing so many relevant issues of our time.
Despite the many challenges green businesses face, it is an exciting time with incredible opportunity - finally some of the public is finally starting to demand environmentally responsible products.
But sadly most of the general public are not quite there yet and I think the allure of a green job is the job part. Yes there are many professionals that do in fact want a green career, but so many people really don't fathom yet what a green job really means.
It would be fantastic if we could close the education gap a bit by starting trade schools and college programs to train workers for jobs in green industries.
Also, it would have been nice if the recent stimulus bill would have had much more money in it for environmental projects.
Thanks again for the great article!
~ Jason Patrick
http://www.moneytheory.com
Jobs follow ROI
I only see green jobs growing if the Return on Investment (ROI) for green projects increases.
Right now we're still enjoying cheap oil, cheap natural gas and cheap coal. The ROI on alternative energy and sustainability is just not that compelling right now to drive a lot of investment in that direction.
At some point oil will become very expensive again. When oil reaches $200-300 a barrel, the ROI for alternative energy will become very compelling.
I link green jobs and green investment to green ROI. As the cost of conventional energy moves higher, this will increase the ROI for alternative energy and create more projects and more jobs.