America’s Green Skills Gap Raises Concerns About Energy Transition
Green skills in the U.S. aren’t growing as fast as green jobs, pressuring companies to get creative to find the workers they need to carry out the energy transition and take advantage of the historic amount of money pouring into climate technology. Generous incentives in last year’s U.S.
Inflation Reduction Act have prompted billions of dollars in clean-energy investment announcements that are forecast to create millions of U.S. jobs. But recent data shows strong growth in demand for green skills exacerbating an already tight market where demand outstrips supply.
In 2022, the number of U.S. LinkedIn profiles with at least one green skill grew around 8.4%, compared with a 20% rise in green job postings on the platform, according to data from LinkedIn provided to The Wall Street Journal. The online professional network defines green skills as those that make economic activities more environmentally sustainable, such as carbon accounting, hydrogen engineering and battery manufacturing.
It considers green jobs to be ones which include climate action objectives such as removing pollution and preserving natural resources. Likewise, more than 114,000 U.S. clean energy jobs were created in 2022, according to last week’s annual employment report from the U.S.
Department of Energy. Every state recorded growth in these jobs and the rise outpaced both the wider economy and the overall energy sector. More than 40% of all U.S.
energy jobs last year were in clean energy, defined as ones that include technologies aligned with a net-zero future such as electric vehicles, renewables or hydrogen. “We need this concentration of workers with green skills to be higher," said Sue Duke, head of global public policy at LinkedIn. The IRA
. Read more on livemint.com
