The Green Economy – The New Wild West

In the last few years, as conversations about the Green Economy have increased, so has the interest of people in what careers might evolve. Carol McClelland, founder of Green Career Central and author of several books including Green Careers for Dummies, recently shared some insights with Career Vision about how to frame this broad subject. McClelland and her organization work to stay on top of this enormous, amorphous, emerging new way of thinking and how it is reshaping our economy. In her words, it is the new Wild West of the career world, with frontiers to explore and opportunities to create.

To set the stage, some basic terminology and understanding are helpful.

Green Economy refers to any economic activity that improves the environment in some way. This is not a new market segment, but one that is being integrated at various levels in all industries or economic sectors. For example, it is a part of housing, transportation, agriculture, or energy. It isn’t a separate category or industry.

Green Jobs, by extension, are those jobs that improve the environment in some way. They can be differentiated by having a direct or indirect impact. Most of these require new knowledge or skills, and ways of looking at our environment and resources. This new knowledge is in addition to the industry knowledge that supports the field you are in or plan to work in.

So what does environmental improvement mean? McClelland breaks down this new way of thinking about it four ways. These improvements are increasingly being measured and analyzed by people and organizations.

1. Emission Reduction (renewable energy, less energy, less pollution)
2. Waste Reduction (recycle, reuse waste, decrease hazardous waste, create power from waste)
3. Water Conservation (conserve, recycle, reuse, desalinize)
4. Restoration of Nature (conserve, protect and restore natural resources and ecosystems)

The most progressive organizations employ a strategy called the Triple Bottom Line. This approach is used to evaluate an organization’s (or individual’s) impact on profit, planet, and people. The evolving Science of Sustainability field is developing standardized measurements and suggestions to improve our business processes and lifestyles to ensure minimum negative impact and improve long term positive impact on our environments. Clean Tech refers to the investment strategies used to support the sustainably improved products and services across the different industries.

Where and what are green jobs? After publishing Green Careers for Dummies, McClelland developed a map of the Green Economy that provides more specific descriptions of the Green Industries. For further reference, note the numbers in the center circle of the pie map, which refer to the chapters in her book that discuss the related industries. (Article continues below the map)

If you look at this map as a clock, about 75% of the anticipated job growth will be in Direct Jobs shown in the sectors beginning at 9 o’clock and display clockwise to the 6 o’clock mark. This outer ring includes “Nature”, “Infrastructure” and Tangibles”. A smaller percentage of job growth will be in the sector labeled “Intangibles”, from 6 o’clock back to 9 o’clock. As you dig deeper into this map, you will see that these jobs are more likely to evolve as the industries expand and mature. Right now, the demand is low because everything is new and unfolding. The next layer in the map provides a broad description of the industry category: Natural Environment, Power, IT, Built Environment, Manufacturing Cycle and Creating Demand. These are finally reduced to more specific industries: Environmental Science, Natural Resource

Management, Smart Grid, Information Technology, Building, and Transportation. The Manufacturing Cycle is broken out with more specificity (such as Extracting Raw Materials through Waste), with arrows depicting the interconnectivity of the process flow. This segment outlines the emerging cradle-to-grave strategy. A click on each pie segment on the interactive map on the Green Career Central website enables you to drill down to more specific information related to the “greening” of each industry.

This excellent resource allows you to create a mental map of a complex and evolutionary movement that will become a part of the full economy. It shows how one can enter the Green Economy from different points, and that people already have some of the industry know-how. The importance of planning is deciding what new skills and knowledge you need to incorporate to enter the emerging green development in their industry. Be patient, and keep an eye on the trends. The Green Economy is in its infancy and will take some time to unfold.

For students, it is helpful to investigate the industries that are included in the broader categories to be aware of all your options. These industry segments address the emerging “green technologies” within the categories. From this point it is easier to identify college majors and colleges to prepare for your future.

The Green Economy is not black and white. As you investigate the map, notice that these sectors overlap and some are interconnected. Like explorers charting new frontiers, the paths and requirements are not clearly marked. Early movers will blaze their own trails. The benefit of a new territory is that it offers tremendous opportunity for innovation and invention. And, as with all experimentation, it carries the risk of limited success and competition. When considering Green Careers, think of your experience, skills, and education as tools in a toolkit. You will use all the tools, and will need to add more as your industry continues to evolve and grow. The Green Economy is becoming the new way of life.