Green jobs hold steady against economic crash

Environmental, climate change and sustainability roles may not be recession proof, say recruiters, but they are certainly recession resilient.

“Appointments are still being made and we are hearing from clients that there is a need to grow their teams,” says Ben Cartland, associate at Acre Resources. “And we are not talking about the standard replacement roles when people leave, these are newly-generated positions.”

Acre is even recruiting into banks. “HSBC has recently gone through a round of recruitment, and Barclays is currently focusing on its community investment schemes,” says Cartland.

Preliminary findings from Acre’s second CSR salary survey, due out in January, show that people are feeling more secure in their green jobs now than a year ago.

Jobs that continue to be in demand include anything around reputation risk management, biofuels trading and emissions trading, says Cartland.

In addition, sustainability managers with experience working in large corporations are still hard to come by. And people with a renewable energy/engineering background remain incredibly difficult to source, he adds.

Dawn Kenworthy, energy team leader at environmental recruiter, Allen and York, maintains that the job market for renewables and energy management is still “booming”.

Kenworthy says roles in energy management are sought-after given consultants and corporates want to save as much money as possible in a recession.

In renewables, anything in the field of project development is particularly desirable, as are people with technical, financing and marketing backgrounds, according to Christine Lins, secretary general at European Renewable Energy Council (EREC). “The industry is desperately looking for qualified personnel,” she adds.


In it for the long haul

Stability in the green jobs market largely comes down to the public promises made by governments and companies to reduce their carbon footprints, says Acre's Cartland. Despite pressures presented by the recession, it is now too late for most to go back on their environmental commitments.

Europe’s leaders have pledged to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 20 per cent by 2020 and source 20 per cent of all energy from renewables.

Britain has also become the first country worldwide to put in place a legal framework for reducing carbon emissions. The five-year carbon budgets set out by the Committee on Climate Change are expected to be taken up by the UK government as part of the Climate Change Bill. The new climate bill, which became law on December 1, will tighten the screws on all layers of government to meet the target of cutting emissions by 80 per cent from 1990 levels by 2050.

Demand is growing for carbon consultancies to find cost as well as carbon savings, according to Bill Sneyd, director for advisory services at CarbonNeutral Company . “There has been a change in emphasis in what new clients are looking for,” he says. “Cutting costs is now a big issue. And if you are looking to cut your carbon emissions you will cut costs at the same time through efficiency improvements.”


A safe bet?

The stimulus package proposed by the European Commission on November 26 included plans for investment in energy-efficient technologies. Proposals include a European green cars initiative with combined funding of at least €5 billion, a European energy-efficient buildings initiative worth €1 billion; and a "factories of the future" initiative estimated at €1.2 billion – aimed at developing new technologies and materials to improve the competitiveness of European manufacturers.

Investing in infrastructure and energy-efficiency keeps people in the construction industry in work, saves energy and improves efficiency, says the European Commission.

The recent drop in the price of oil will dull some of the enthusiasm for investment in renewable energy. But Christian Kjaer, CEO of the European Wind Energy Association believes this is a short-term concern.

In the long term, countries will benefit from securing themselves as leaders in renewable energy, he says. “There are a lot of elements that go in the renewable energy sector’s favour. There is no CO₂ price risk, no fuel price risk and, from an European perspective, renewables are the only indigenous energy resource we have left.”


Short-term problems

That said, investment in renewable and clean energy projects is likely to take a slower pace as the credit market tightens.

The European wind and solar power markets have been growing at around 30 per cent year-on-year for the last three years - this has created a bottleneck on investments and full order books for manufacturers of wind turbines and photovoltaic products.

But forecasts for the industry’s growth in 2009 are less certain due to uncertainty over whether developers will be able to secure financing for the wind farms and solar plant projects that have already been agreed.

The solar PV industry is most at risk, says Lins at EREC, since the technology is less mature compared to wind and therefore less certain of securing return on investment.

Last month EREC released a technology roadmap to 2020 in which it indicated that by 2020, the European renewables industry could grow to deliver two million jobs, from 400,000 today.

Though such projections are far from certain, they may not be unreasonable in the long term.

“This is a booming sector,” says Lins. “Europe really needs renewable energy sources and they are going to come. But it is a question of how quickly development will happen. In that respect, it is not about laying people off, but about employing people less quickly.”