Our ‘green future’ needs future generations to step up

The emerging eco-industry is touted as the wave of the future: the path to green living, the key to arresting climate change and global warming. It means replacing the thousands of “brown” jobs that must out of necessity become obsolete with new, “green” jobs. Powering the movement to renewable energy and environmental consciousness is a new employment sector: green careers.

But it’s something of a paradox.

While the eco-industry is young, it’s overwhelmingly driven, operated, and reliant upon people nearing retirement. Take eco-thought leader, David Suzuki. He’s certainly no spring chicken. Well, you may say Suzuki – dynamo that he is – is just one man. True enough, but he’s representative of a worrisome trend. Over the next ten years, all those inevitable retirements, combined with a woeful lack of graduation and hiring, will create a vicious circle of non-replacement.

Given the necessity of the green job industry, the word “crisis” is being used to describe the challenge. And perhaps, it’s not alarmist. The Canadian Federation of Earth Sciences, for example, says Canada is facing a “looming and wide-ranging” shortage of qualified scientists.

How serious is this shortfall?

It’s already a full-blown crisis in certain sectors. According to the Electricity Sector Council’s 2008 report, the electricity industry faces an immediate shortfall of 1,300 positions every year for the next three years. Looming retirement makes the situation even worse. Nearly 30 per cent of the industry, approximately 25,000 positions must be replaced within the next six years to meet Canada’s energy demands.

The infrastructure backbone of the green movement, the trades are also facing serious shortages. Before things like, say, solar cells can be put to use, labourers need to learn the necessary skills to construct, install and connect them to the grid. Forget connecting to the grid, skilled trades are needed to expand the grid to accommodate new green sources of energy.

“The majority of our skilled labourers are nearing retirement,” says Mira Shenker, editor of ReNew Canada, a magazine devoted to infrastructure renewal. “The young people who could take their places are not interested in becoming trades workers.”

In a very real sense, the timing could not be more unfortunate. Canada and the United States are in the beginning stages of a boom of new eco-industry jobs – or would be, if they manage to find people to hire for them.

A recent forecast by the American Solar Energy Society demonstrated that nearly 8.5 million new jobs were created in the renewable energy and energy-efficient industries. By 2030, they forecast that number to reach 40 million.

Is that a lot? In 2006, 7.68 million Americans worked in construction – hardly an insignificant industry. In Canada, about 530,000 (approximately 3 per cent of the labour force) work in “an environmentally related job.” That’s roughly (very roughly) on par with the two countries’ respective populations, which points to a continent-wide trend – if not a global one.

Germany, for example, created 250,000 “eco-jobs” in the same time frame. A 2007 study by the German environment ministry predicted that 150,000 new green jobs would be created by 2020.

Where is this mini-boom coming from? Political will. The federal government has committed itself to deriving 90 per cent of Canada’s electricity from non-emitting sources by 2020. Recognizing the impossibility of getting there without a suitably trained (or re-trained) workforce, the energy ministry is doing all it can to assist private organizations in training.

A recently-announced partnership between the energy ministry and the Electricity Sector Council will help train solar equipment installers. The ministry will also support the Association of Canadian Community Colleges to develop a national curriculum for designers and installers of solar energy systems. Courses will include design and installation for commercial and residential solar hot water system and for various applications and sizes of photovoltaic systems.

The provinces are getting into the act as well. Last year, Ontario’s Chief Energy Conservation Officer (CECO), officially recommended appointing energy conservation officers for all health care and academic institutions, and all leading businesses. Ontario is a big province – that’s a lot of energy conservation officers.

Ontario is also proposing The Green Energy Act, slated to be introduced in the legislature by late-February, which will expand Ontario’s use of renewable energy sources such as wind, solar, biomass and biogas. It will also encourage energy conservation and create more than 50,000 green jobs over the next three years.

In 2007, the CECO’s report recommended the creation of a Municipal Energy Conservation Office in every Ontario community. Slightly more than a year later, 15 Municipal Energy Conservation Officers have been appointed, with more on the way. Again, the issue is a lack of suitable candidates.

John Challenger, chief executive of the American Solar Energy Society, appeals to students entering post-secondary institutions. “The demand for ‘green-collar’ jobs is really exploding, especially as the cost of energy continues to climb. Students need to start thinking about developing skills that will give them an edge for these types of careers that did not even exist until recently.”

The host of new green careers ranges from Hydrologists, Environmental Engineers, and Conservation Biologists to Pollution Control Engineers and Toxicologists. The emerging eco-industry also needs people from traditional disciplines, trained in new ways: lawyers versed in environmental legislation, LEED-certified architects and urban planners, or ordinary trades trained in new energy efficient construction techniques.

That’s the paradox. Just as society starts to accept alternative energy, at-home energy conservation, and changing their day-to-day habits, there may not be enough people to design and construct geothermal wells and windmills, or build environmentally-friendly homes and public buildings.

It’s all-too-easy to see where that leads. The cost of such things goes through the roof, largely driven by spiralling labour costs, undermining public acceptance of what is still a new and vulnerable industry. For that reason, sceptics think the eco-industry boom will be a short-lived one. Economics has a way of trumping ethics, they say.

But change can happen quickly. A generation ago, the tiny republic of Iceland burned coal for the majority of its electricity. Now? Almost 100 per cent comes from clean sources such as tidal and (particularly) geothermal.

What happened in Iceland? Nothing, really – the mood just changed. It seems to be changing here too. So for students looking to choose a career, the winds still look favourable for eco-jobs.