Did your high school counselor ever tell you you could become an environmental economist? How about a biomass plant technician? Or an operational manager for wind energy?
Those careers, which once seemed a bit idealistic, reserved for, say, tree huggers or granola chewers, are now part of a whole series well paid “green jobs.”
The current transition to a low-carbon, resource-efficient economy requires systemic changes that will result not only in new products and services, but also changes in production processes, business models, required skills and tasks involved in existing professions. Green jobs need green skills — those qualities that encompass, develop and support the knowledge, skills, values and attitudes necessary to live in a sustainable and resource-efficient society.
Never before have these green skills been so necessary. The need to move to more environmentally sustainable modes of production and consumption has been fueled whole new jobs in areas such as pollution reduction and waste prevention, environmental remediation, sustainable procurement and energy generation and management.
Green careers finally take center stage
According to the government-run occupational database O*NETthe median annual wage for an employee in one of the green jobs is $76,530 – about 31% higher than a national median salary of $58,260.
The World Economic Forum says decoupling from fossil fuels is more important than ever. And it’s happening – solar and wind energy have grown tremendously and now make up more than 10% of global electricity. That also means that these two technologies need to scale up market share through various factors – as the power system as a whole grows as well – to significantly reduce energy. To do this, these and other renewable industries need to attract new workers.
A new analysis of Promo sheet reveals some optimistic and useful findings about the green jobs sector. Which sectors need now? green workers† Occupations include occupations that either contribute directly to the study, protection and improvement of the environment, or that are performed with close attention to the environment and its impact on the work or industry in question.
- Renewable energy, such as wind energy engineers;
- Sustainability, such as sustainability specialists;
- Agriculture, such as agricultural engineers;
- Nature conservation, such as forest rangers;
- Environmental sciences, such as biologists and environmental scientists;
- Education, such as environmental science professors;
- Pollution control, such as environmental compliance inspectors; and,
- Waste management, such as recycling and land reclamation workers.
The 50 jobs that fell under the definition of “green” employ as many as 875,000 in the US. At that number, they represent about 0.6% of the U.S. workforce, a statistic Promoleaf attributes less as an indication of how widespread green jobs are and more as evidence of how many more of them are needed.
- Green jobs are expected to grow 8.6% over the next decade, with a predicted 114,300 new jobs added to the green workforce during that time.
- Eight out of ten highest-paying green jobs offer a salary of $100,000 or more per year.
- At the top of the list are science managers — short for managers of science labs and R&D departments in companies — with a salary of $137,900 per year.
- Excluding wind energy engineers ($107,800) and environmental economists ($105,630), the top 10 green careers are largely made up of occupations related to the management and development of renewable energy activities.
- Wind turbine maintenance technicians and solar photovoltaic installers were in the top two jobs for the greatest growth over the next decade.
- Among the green jobs with the highest number of vacancies as of May 2022 are occupations in environmental science, occupational health and safety and recycling.
- The overall growth rate for green jobs higher than for the total workforce is +7.7%.
- The best green career states are California and Texas, and the best green career cities are Los Angeles and Chicago.
- Alaska, Colorado and Washington have green jobs that make up nearly 1% of the workforce, or ≈40% higher than expected based on the national average.
- Iowa ranks in the top 10 states, with an estimated 12,100 employees (0.8% of the workforce) in green jobs. The most common green job in the state is “wind power development manager,” which equates to the fact that 57% of Iowa’s electricity is generated by wind turbines.
- States like Arizona and South Carolina offered only 0.4% and 0.3% of the workforce in green jobs, a very low concentration compared to the national average of 0.6%.
Case Study: An Environmental Economist
Environmental economics is concerned with the study of the economics of natural resources at both ends of the spectrum of the supply chain – their extraction and use and the waste products that are returned to the environment. They also study how economic incentives harm or help the environment and how they can be used to create sustainable policies and environmental solutions.
Environmental economists can study or develop policy recommendations related to:
- External effects, or unintended effects on the environment or human health as a result of economic activity;
- Permit trading, also known as ‘cap and trade’, is a policy tool to tackle greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming;
- Cost-benefit analysis of environmental regulations;
- The economics of biofuels, waste management, land clearance and other environmental technologies and industries; or,
- Valuation, which aims to allocate natural resources in dollars and deals with ecosystem services provided by nature such as erosion prevention by trees or water filtering by plants.
As environmental economists perform analysis with regard to environmental protection and the use of the natural environment, such as water, air, land and renewable energy sources, they evaluate and quantify the benefits, costs, incentives and impacts of alternative options using economic principles and statistical techniques.
Would you like to know more about the field of environmental economics?
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