In 2018, 46-year-old Jo Taylor was concerned about the climate crisis, overwhelmed by her job as a secondary school teacher and struggling to find a plumber for her new houseboat.
She decided to solve all three problems at once.
“I ended up learning to do my own plumbing, and then friends started asking me to do theirs,” she recalls. “I really enjoyed it so I decided to give my notice and retrain.”
Taylor now works for Octopus as a heat pump engineer, installing the energy efficient devices needed in homes across the UK.
She is one of many workers who will need to embrace new jobs to fill a growing number of green vacancies. In sectors from energy to construction and transport, government programmes such as the US Inflation Reduction Act, and the rise of ESG investment, are accelerating work towards net zero targets, and demand for people to do it.
Green jobs, defined as roles focused on sustainability and environmentally-friendly activities, now make up a third of postings in the UK, according to social network LinkedIn. Among the fastest-growing are land acquisition mangers, waste management specialists and sustainability analysts.
Experts hope that growth will counterbalance jobs lost to the green transformation. The EU estimates just under 500,000 roles in areas such as fossil fuels could disappear on the way to net zero targets, a tiny fraction of the total. But in the UK alone 250,000 have already been created, according to the Climate Change Committee, and the government’s green task force has pledged to increase that to 2mn by 2030.
“One of the things we’ve seen over the past few years is a very consistent, steady increase in demand for green roles,” says Sue Duke, head of global public policy at LinkedIn. “Last year, when we saw hiring being pulled back in most sectors, we saw the opposite trend when it came to green jobs and skills.”
In Octopus’s Slough site, recruits practice fitting heat pumps, smart meters, solar panels and electric vehicle charging points on two model homes. The company’s energy services arm says that last year it received more than 31,000 applications for about 1,100 roles. Starting salaries for electricians and heat pump engineers range from £32,000 to £38,000 per year, depending on region.
Octopus says strong consumer demand keeps new staff occupied. It says it fits 14,000 smart meters per week and that about 50,000 households have signed up for a heat pump.
“Britain has no shortage of people wanting to work in designing, manufacturing and installing heat pumps and other low-carbon technologies,” says John Szymik, chief executive of Octopus Energy Services. “It’s a brilliant career move too as it means future-proofing your skills.”
Demand is growing in other fields, too. Electric vehicle sales rose by 40 per cent in the UK in 2022; in the US they increased by about half last year. Now a decade old, makes such as Tesla are likely to require increased servicing. Yet according to Institute of the Motor Industry data, only 39,000 of 168,600 vehicle technicians in the UK are qualified to maintain electric vehicles. In the US, just 1.4 per cent of mechanics are EV certified.
EV industry leaders say they need more government support, such as funding for retraining. “What we’ve had to do is cross train people from other areas of engineering like aerospace and railways,” says Justin Lunny, CEO of Everrati, a bespoke electric car manufacturer. “But there aren’t many resources to help us do that.”
The need for white-collar workers to help manage and finance green transitions is also increasing.
After graduating, Arth Mishra wanted to work in finance, but during interviews with mainstream asset managers and investment banks he became frustrated with financing of fossil fuels.
He decided to become an associate at Pollination, a specialist climate change investment and advisory firm. His role has involved mobilising private capital for sustainable infrastructure in developing countries and retrofitting social housing in the UK to make it more environmentally sound.
“There’s a huge diversity of people here, like former conservation scientists and people who worked in oil and gas then had a ‘come to Jesus’ moment,” he says. “Then there are people who worked in traditional finance and asset management.”
Ian Culligan worked as a physiotherapist for 10 years before becoming head of health and environment in the clinical team of health insurer Bupa. He now helps health workers reduce emissions by using fewer plastic disposable gloves, for example, or cutting unnecessary lighting and seeing patients remotely. The healthcare sector was responsible for 5 per cent of global emissions in 2020, according to medical journal The Lancet.
Moving roles took Culligan three years and he had to figure his own path. “I knew how to put someone’s shoulder back in but not how to manage green projects,” he says. “When it comes to [healthcare] sustainability, there’s not a huge amount out there.”
Demand for green roles and training for people to do them is driven by government policy and private investment. As part of the US Inflation Reduction Act, for example, a $1bn fund to help companies find zero-emission replacements for polluting vehicles includes grants to train workers to maintain them.
Some companies, such as Octopus, Bupa and Pollination, fund workers to learn on the job. However, many employees find themselves footing the bill. The UK government offers tradespeople £500 towards heat pump installation training, for example, but the risk the investment will not pay off dissuades some.
Government policies also have a mixed record in delivering on green jobs, and wavering from politicians increases hiring uncertainty. According to the UK’s Office for National Statistics, the number of jobs in onshore wind nearly halved from 2015, after the government placed a de facto ban on new projects.
The Climate Change Committee has warned that in the UK the government needs clearer plans “to harness the potential of the transition and to manage its risks”.
“I think market dynamics will work over time — if there’s a long period of strong demand and wages structurally increase that would lead people to retrain,” says Capital Economics’ David Oxley. “I just don’t think we’ve seen strong enough signals to allow that to happen en masse.”
