Increasing Demand for Clean Energy Jobs

In an effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, economies all over the world are noticing a trend toward creating more jobs in the environmental sector.

In order to achieve the worldwide emission reduction goals outlined in the Paris Agreement of 2015, increasing demand for people in the field of renewable energy is needed to meet these goals.

According to a United Nations report published this week, the world needs to double its electricity supply from renewable energy sources in the next 8 years if it wants to keep global warming below the target of 1.5°C.

Geni Peters, director of research at ECO Canada, argues that this green shift is increasing regardless of businesses’ focus on clean energy.

“I think one thing that also has come up is that the economy as a whole is slowly greening. So, regardless of what sector a worker is employed in, they’re going to find that they’re going to be increasing requirements for them to be familiar with environmental regulations and policies,” said Peters on Wednesday.

According to Peters, energy advisors are a new career growing from efforts to promote the green economy. They provide advice to major corporations in the technology, construction, and engineering sectors on how to better manage their energy consumption.

“We have very high demand for energy advisors across Canada to help us determine what level of energy efficiency our current building stock will have so that we can then improve upon that, reduce our energy usage in the building sector and improve our carbon footprint,” said Peters.

The market for electric vehicles is projected to grow by 39% annually, making it one of the fastest-growing sectors in the clean energy sector.

According to the researcher associate at the Canadian Climate Institute, Sarah Miller, professionals in technology and the electrical area are among those that could look forward to economic opportunities with the shift toward clean energy.

“Sectors that see significant economic opportunity include, low carbon electricity, building technology, battery, storage, biofuels; all those sorts of sectors could benefit from the shift to net-zero,” said Miller on Wednesday.

Extreme weather conditions and increasing temperatures are only two examples of how climate change is already having a significant impact on the economy and society, with serious consequences for numerous jobs. However, Sarah Miller argues that there’s still hope among those in industries like construction and agriculture.

“We see construction benefiting from increasing climate impacts because of the need to repair and replace damaged infrastructure prematurely,” she said.

Original source material for this article taken from here