Green Job Trends

Several trends are shaping the future of green jobs and the growth of the green economy. Entrepreneurs from more established sectors like telecom and IT are moving into the green sector. Traditional companies are adding new divisions to take advantage of growing consumer demand for green products and services. And greentech startups are buying up assets from bankrupt old-economy industries and repurposing them, while energy incumbents are buying up greentech assets.

Watch Videos of Experts Discussing the Green Economy

Industry Crossover

People often talk about greentech as a single industry, but actually it straddles many different industries, including energy, transportation, IT and more 1,2. Greentech companies are searching for talent from within these different industries, and entrepreneurs are crossing over, bringing new ideas and experiences to bear on clean energy, green transportation, green IT and other green industries. Greentech has seen a significant influx from telecom 3 and IT 4. Big-name entrepreneurs such as Sun Microsystems co-founder Vinod Khosla, Ethernet inventor and 3Com co-founder Bob Metcalfe and Brightmail founder Sunil Paul have moved into green sectors like solar, wind, biofuel, water purification, electric vehicles and smart grid technologies5. Employees – and technologies – also are cross pollinating from biotech 6, nanotech 7,8, semiconductor 9 and automotive 10industries.

Greening of Regular Jobs

As environmental policies tighten and public awareness of environmental issues grows, many companies in areas not traditionally considered green are adding environmentally friendly initiatives 11,12,13. This means that many of the new green jobs will co-exist with non-green jobs in the same company 14, potentially making it more difficult to identify which are green 15,16,17. Examples include: car companies that make both conventional and hybrid or electric vehicles 18,19; semiconductor companies that also make solar equipment 20; construction companies that install green buildings as well as regular buildings 21; biotech companies engineering crops for biofuels 22; and oil companies entering biofuel production or partnering on solar projects 23,24. These initiatives span from adding a few solar panels to a roof to removing hazardous materials from all products to bringing a company’s carbon footprint below net zero. There’s no clear consensus on what makes a company environmentally friendly enough to be considered green 25.

Vulture Capital

The recession has brought layoffs, but it also has brought some good deals for companies moving into green sectors. Oil companies have been buying up defunct biofuel factories, and renewable energy companies have scooped up shuttered plants to expand manufacturing. For example, Valero Energy Corp. in 2009 bought ethanol plants from bankrupt VeraSun Energy Corp. 26 Green-building materials company Serious Materials in 2009 bought and reopened a Kensington Windows factory that had closed in 2008 27. In October 2009, renewable energy companies Clairvoyant Energy and Xtreme Power bought an idle Ford Motor Co. assembly, which they’re converting into a manufacturing park that makes thin-film solar panels and energy-storage and power-management systems for solar and wind power systems 28.

The companies believe that converting the factories is cheaper and quicker than building them from scratch. Meanwhile, a number of solar companies are going a different route. Instead of manufacturing their own products, they’re tapping into excess manufacturing capacity in the auto industry 29. As auto companies make fewer cars, their suppliers have lost business. Some solar companies like Skyline Solar are outsourcing manufacturing to those suppliers 30. That trend could mean some expected green manufacturing jobs will materialize as saved auto suppliers’ jobs. If renewable energy companies are able to manufacture more quickly and cheaply by outsourcing, that will also help those companies grow 31.

References

1. 1. Clint Swett (9 April 2007). “Green tech touted as red-hot option for the region” (PDF). Sacbee.com. Sacramento Bee. http://www.valleyvision.org/partnership/pdf/Bee%20green%20energy%20story.pdf. Retrieved 12 November 2009. 
2. 2. “Green jobs ahead – trained workers needed!” U.S. Department of Labor Career Voyages. http://www.careervoyages.gov/green-main.cfm?printerfriendly=yes&. Retrieved 12 November 2009.
3. 3. Om Malik (7 October 2007). “Telecom Investors Seeing Green.” GigaOM. http://gigaom.com/2007/10/07/telecom-investors-seeing-green/. Retrieved 12 November 2009.
4. 4. Jennifer Kho (26 February 2008). “Solar Temblor: 9 Big Trends – #8 Execs Cross the Chasm.” Greentech Media. http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/8-execs-cross-the-chasm-634/. Retrieved 12 November 2009.
5. 5. Katie Fehrenbacher (5 May 2008). “25 Who Ditched Infotech for Cleantech.” Earth2Tech. http://earth2tech.com/2008/05/05/25-who-ditched-infotech-for-cleantech/. Retrieved 12 November 2009.
6. 6. Connie Johnson Hambley (7 October 2008). “Why Clean Tech Is Taking Biotech's Shine.” BusinessWeek. http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/oct2008/tc2008103_906261.htm. Retrieved 12 November 2009.
7. 7. Dana Childs (2 May 2007). “Report quantifies impact of nanotechnology in sustainable energy.” Cleantech Group. http://cleantech.com/news/1108/report-quantifies-impact-of-nanotechno. Retrieved 12 November 2009.
8. 8. Wilma Pretorius (15 August 2007). “Nanotech-cleantech: bridging the gap to real sustainability.” Environmental Chemistry.com http://environmentalchemistry.com/yogi/environmental/200708nanotech.html. Retrieved 12 November 2009.
9. 9. Tom Cheyney (26 October 2009). “Cross-pollinator: Ascent Solar's new boss Farhad Moghadam gets his geek back on.” Fabtech. http://www.fabtech.org/chip_shots/_a/cross-pollinator_ascent_solars_new_boss_farhad_moghadam_gets_his_geek_back_/. Retrieved 12 November 2009.
10. 10. Jennifer Kho (14 August 2008). “Electric-Car Startups Poach From Big Auto.” Greentech Media. http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/electric-car-startups-poach-from-big-auto-1282/. Retrieved 12 November 2009.
11. 11. “U.S. Corporations Go Green” (press release) (31 January 2008). Before the Bell (via Reuters). http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS190487+31-Jan-2008+PRN20080131. Retrieved 12 November 2009.
12. 12. Charles Waltner (27 January 2009). “Corporations Have Lots of Help to Go Green.” Cisco. http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2009/hd_012709.html. Retrieved 12 November 2009.
13. 13. Jill James (15 October 2007). “US: Companies go green: Greenquest or greenwash?” Financial Times via CorpWatch. http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=14753. Retrieved 12 November 2009.
14. 14. “25 Big Companies That Are Going Green” (29 July 2008). Business Pundit. http://www.businesspundit.com/25-big-companies-that-are-going-green/. Retrieved 12 November 2009.
15. 15. Curtis Brainard (19 May 2008). “Defining Green Jobs.” Columbia Journalism Review. http://www.cjr.org/the_kicker/defining_green_jobs.php. Retrieved 12 November 2009.
16. 16. Joel Makower (8 February 2009). “Will Green Jobs Become the New Greenwash?.” Two Steps Forward. http://makower.typepad.com/joel_makower/2009/02/will-green-jobs-become-the-new-greenwash.html. Retrieved 12 November 2009.
17. 17. Bryan Walsh (26 March 2008). “What Is a Green-Collar Job, Exactly?.” Time. http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1809506,00.html. Retrieved 12 November 2009.
18. 18. Sheena Harrison (12 October 2009). “Can Detroit go green?” The Christian Science Monitor. http://features.csmonitor.com/economyrebuild/2009/10/12/can-detroit-go-green/. Retrieved 12 November 2009.
19. 19. Isabel Kallman (16 January 2008). “US Auto Companies Are Going Green.” Alpha+Mom. http://www.alphamom.com/mmb/2008/01/us_auto_companies_are_going_green.php. Retrieved 12 November 2009.
20. 20. Jennifer Kho (6 January 2009). “Will Solar Save Chip Companies?” Salon.com. http://www.salon.com/technology/the_gigaom_network/clean_tech/2009/01/06/will_solar_save_chip_companies. Retrieved 12 November 2009.
21. 21. Curtis Brainard (19 May 2008). “Defining Green Jobs.” Columbia Journalism Review. http://www.cjr.org/the_kicker/defining_green_jobs.php. Retrieved 12 November 2009.
22. 22. William Patalon III (1 May 2008). “Agri-Biotech Giant Monsanto Moves into its Newest Venture: Biofuels From Prairie Grasses.” Money Morning.
23. 23. Clifford Krauss (26 May 2009). “Big Oil Warms to Ethanol and Biofuel Companies.” The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/27/business/energy-environment/27biofuels.html. Retrieved 12 November 2009.
24. 24. John Perlin (19 September 2009). “Oil and Solar Do Mix.” Miller-McCune. http://www.miller-mccune.com/business_economics/oil-and-solar-do-mix-1461. Retrieved 12 November 2009.
25. 25. Joel Makower (8 February 2009). “Will Green Jobs Become the New Greenwash?.” Two Steps Forward. http://makower.typepad.com/joel_makower/2009/02/will-green-jobs-become-the-new-greenwash.html. Retrieved 12 November 2009.
26. 26. Hope Deutscher (1 April 2009). “VeraSun, Valero close deal on ethanol plants, site.” Ethanol Producer Magazine. http://www.ethanolproducer.com/article.jsp?article_id=5528. Retrieved 12 November 2009.
27. 27. Ron Pernick, Clint Wilder, et al. (October 2009). “Clean Tech Job Trends 2009” (PDF). Clean Edge. http://www.cleanedge.com/reports/pdf/JobTrends2009.pdf. Retrieved 12 November 2009.
28. 28. Jennifer Kho (16 October 2009). “Solar Energy & Detroit: Renewable Companies See Advantages in Auto-Industry's Pain.” RenewableEnergyWorld.com. http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2009/10/solar-energy-and-detroit-renewable-companies-see-advantages.... Retrieved 12 November 2009.
29. 29. Mira Oberman (6 August 2009). “Michigan hopes green jobs can save the rust belt.” AFP. http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gN3juK6rE-6xkY_sA8zFNTMho9KA. Retrieved 12 November 2009.
30. 30. Jennifer Kho (22 October 2009). “Solar and Automakers Unite in Tough Times.” Green Inc. http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/22/solar-and-auto-makers-unite-in-tough-times/. Retrieved 12 November 2009.
31. 31. Jennifer Kho (22 October 2009). “Solar and Automakers Unite in Tough Times.” Green Inc. http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/22/solar-and-auto-makers-unite-in-tough-times/. Retrieved 12 November 2009.