Does the UK need a Green Skills Czar? Quite possibly.

At COP29, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer seemed a little nostalgic. In a speech on Day 2 of the conference, he looked back on some of his government’s key climate announcements since coming into office: Great British Energy and funding for 11 green hydrogen plants, for instance. All support his mission of ensuring “our country and our children have the prosperity, the security and the stability they deserve for generations to come.”

It’s a noble aim and, here at Innovation Zero, we love to see infrastructure projects being built. But, a new LinkedIn report, published during COP29, offers a stark reminder: to achieve their climate aims, there’s one thing this government – and other governments – can’t afford to overlook…the workforce. 

The authors of the report analysed the prevalence of the 1,200 ‘green skills’ – like ‘carbon accounting’ and ‘sustainable design’ – that LinkedIn allows its more than one billion users to add to their profiles.

Their key findings:

• “Global demand for green talent grew twice as quickly as supply between 2023 and 2024 – with demand increasing by 11.6% and supply by 5.6%.” In other words: companies wanted to hire more green talent than was available.

• “By 2050, this gap will swell to 101.5% – leaving us without half the green talent that employers will need.”

• The UK already faces a significant shortfall. Between 2023 and 2024, growth in demand from UK employers was a staggering 40.7% higher than growth in supply – 6.8x the global average.
   

Source: LinkedIn
 

It’s an issue. As Sue Duke, VP of Global Public Policy and Economic Graph at LinkedIn, warned in the report: "Every single climate goal [globally] is at risk if we don’t have a workforce prepared to deliver the change we urgently need."

It begs the question: how exactly can the UK and other countries close their gaps? This month, we asked two LinkedIn Top Voices for their suggestions. (Their views are independent of LinkedIn’s.)

Giulia Marzetti is a sustainability and green transition expert, and spoke at our last conference in April. She was previously a Policy Officer at the European Commission, where she managed an over €80 million portfolio of sustainable innovation projects. She currently works at Deloitte. 

Illai Gescheit helped to build the corporate venture arms of BP and Siemens Energy, and has advised over 200 entrepreneurs in his career. A guest lecturer at London Business School, he recently launched his own strategic advisory firm – Gescheit & Partners – to support founders, investors, and nonprofits “aiming for global social and environmental change.”

Both Marzetti and Gescheit said we need to address the skills gap on two fronts: thinking about both our current and future workforce.

They believe we need to integrate green skills into curriculums across all education levels.

• Gescheit believes green education must start from a very young age: from Year 1, school children should learn climate terminology, be taught about the problems the world faces, and be encouraged to think of solutions. He also suggests that children should be taught to use AI tools (which can help to fast-track climate solutions.)

• For those who’ve already left school, Marzetti suggests universities could add mandatory modules, like sustainability management and renewable energy trading, to non-sustainability courses, like economics, finance and politics. She also notes that some European governments are incentivising the study of STEM subjects (much needed in the green transition) by lowering tuition fees for STEM degrees. 

Marzetti believes that “for a clean and just transition, upskilling and reskilling of the current workforce has to be front of mind,” particularly for those in jobs that could be replaced by technology in the next 5-10 years. To achieve this, and ensure the workforce is kept updated with “the latest green technologies and practices,” she suggests we should:

• Promote lifelong learning and continuous professional development (CPD).

• Direct funding into vocational training for green skills – particularly in the construction, transport and agricultural sectors. Governments might, for instance, offer grants and loans to individuals/organisations pursuing said training.

• Increase the number of apprenticeships available for roles such as wind turbine technicians, renewable energy engineers and circular economists.
   

To create demand for training, she thinks campaigns need to be launched to raise awareness of the (many) benefits possessing green skills presents – LinkedIn’s report suggests green talent is currently hired at “a global rate 54.6% above the economy-wide hiring rate.” Partnerships will also need to be created with educational institutions, to develop “tailored training programs that meet industry-specific needs.”

It’s worth noting that those “industry-specific needs” don’t necessarily extend to just technical roles. Gescheit points out that corporate leaders and founders must also be brought into the fold. He believes that:

• Executive education programmes are a great way to “bring leaders up to speed with green skills and sustainability” (all needed if they’re to steer their organisations effectively, in the coming years). The Cambridge Institute of Sustainable Leadership (CISL) currently offers this in the UK. 

• He also says that entrepreneurs must be helped to build and incubate “new climate innovation and mechanisms.” It’s his view that many of the key technological breakthroughs we’ll see in coming years will arise from “science labs in top schools around the globe.” He’s currently working with the Stanford Ecopreneurship programme, Harvard Innovation Labs and the Entrepreneurship Lab at London Business School to support the individuals building in those spaces.

If Marzetti and Gescheit’s comments prove one thing, it’s this: to close the green skills gap – ensuring green investment is effective and that governments achieve their climate goals – there’s no single fix. Much can (and should) be done: from overhauling school curriculums to upskilling corporate executives, and plenty more besides.

For us, it begs the question: does the UK need a Green Skills Czar to lead the work? We’ll leave that one for you to decide…