Learning your carbon ABCs for the green-collar future

GREEN-collar workers are the new black. If the government’s proposal to encourage the environmental goods and services industry of SA comes off, it will, according to the spokesman for the minister of water and environmental affairs, Sputnik Ratau, create an estimated 114000 new jobs.
And it is not only about creating new jobs. The propagation of green skills is also an increasingly urgent management issue for organisations — big, small and everything in between.
Countless other green-collar skills and responsibilities of varying degrees and at every level of employment will be required when it becomes mandatory for companies to complete and submit the department’s highly anticipated greenhouse gas emission reports. A discussion document to investigate measures to implement carbon taxes is due to be released later this year.

So the writing is on the wall, says Kevin James. James is founder and CEO of Global Carbon Exchange (GCX). The South African company — with branches in the US, Namibia, Indonesia, Australia and the Ukraine — helps businesses understand their impact on the environment and teaches them how to reduce it.
Regardless of your personal stance on climate change, it is inevitable that your organisation will be compelled to turn a deeper shade of green in the near future and, says James, you will be better off if you are armed with the expertise prior to that happening.
Companies, he says, need to get to grips with new legislation and other business-goes-green issues as soon as possible. They need to know about things such as how to capture and process relevant data, methodologies for carbon footprinting, the difference between voluntary and mandatory markets, how to achieve carbon neutrality, energy audits, carbon taxes and trading schemes for carbon credits. There are many new skills, responsibilities and processes that will be essential to implement assessments for companies to reduce emissions and to complete the necessary new reports.
Indeed, just as we had to come to terms with value added tax in the early 1990s and black economic empowerment at the turn of the century, we are going to have to bite the green bullet, adjust our thinking, and modify systems and processes to deal with the economics of climate change.
Sustainability and environmental action now require mainstream business attention. It is going to be essential that financial managers understand and know how to quantify their company’s carbon emissions. Many believe that the Greenhouse Gas Protocol Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard will be as critical to relevant managers as Generally Accepted Accounting Principles is to accountants.
“It is no longer a case of business as usual or ‘a nice to have’,” says James, who is also a director of the Carbon Protocol of SA, a section 21 not-for-profit company, which provides guidance and regulation for activities in the climate change response sector of the country.
“Government has expressed its intention to incentivise green industries and jobs. To achieve this, there is going to be a critical need for swift and effective education of this new green-collar sector.”
Climate change, he believes, is the single biggest economic, social and environmental challenge we will face this century and it will, he says, have “massive impact on our reality, including careers and interests”.
James supports the view of Canadian scientist and environmentalist Dr David Suzuki, who argues that the world’s current plan for economic growth is not only not sustainable, but suicidal.
“We have,” contends Suzuki, “created a system that is completely out of balance with the real world that keeps us alive, and climate change is a part of the problem that we have created with this kind of economic system.”
Our economic system, he says, is so fundamentally flawed that it is inevitably destructive, and we “have to set a new bottom line, a bottom line dictated by the reality that we are biological creatures, completely dependent for our survival and wellbeing on clean air, clean water, clean soil, clean energy and biodiversity”.
There’s no question about Suzuki’s commitment to spreading the green gospel: he has spent more than 40 years educating people about environmental issues.
James, however, stresses that educating employees about environmental issues, the impact that mandatory reporting is likely to have on the organisations they work for, and the effect it will have on what they do and how their performance is measured, is one of the first steps towards setting a new bottom line.
In the immediate future — as George Orwell might have noted — while all employees will be required to be green, some employees will be required to be greener than others.
Many speculate that, further down the line, the new green economy will require all of us to employ at least some green skills in our work.
Green 101 training could well become obligatory. Correspondingly, GCX offers a one-day carbon literacy course.
It is designed to give employees and executives a working knowledge of carbon- related factors that will have to be included in their strategies to ensure their departments and businesses are prepared for doing business in a new low-carbon economy.
The organisation’s other two more detailed programmes — a three-day carbon footprint analyst course and a separate three-day energy efficiency auditor course — respectively take participants through the steps required to complete a carbon footprint assessment, and to become an energy efficiency auditor with the skills to be able to complete a small business energy audit.
Most recently, GCX teamed up with Intec to offer the country’s first certified distant learning variation of its carbon footprint analyst course to teach the green audit skills that are required to comply with mandatory greenhouse gas emission reporting. The correspondence programme can be completed over a three- to six-month period.
The course targets accountants and bookkeepers who wish to further their careers and move into the green-collar sector, business managers and owners who wish to ensure their organisations comply with current legislation, and other environmental stakeholders. It takes learners through the steps required to complete a carbon footprint assessment. On successful completion, says James, graduates will have the skills and knowledge required to complete a carbon footprint assessment in accordance with global best practice GHG Protocol and ISO14064.
“We identified what skills are required to empower people to complete a carbon footprint assessment and developed the most comprehensive training possible,” he says. “It is designed to dismiss the mystery surrounding the subject and build capacity to do the necessary assessment yourself. The course is also a good starting point for those individuals who want to get a foot in the door of the green- collar market.”
So, green-collar workers are the new black, and a green qualification is all the rage. But, as fashions come and go, if you are considering adding a little green to your repertoire, it is probably a good idea to get on with it quickly.
After all, while careers promoting environmental responsibility might be considered cutting-edge today, they are likely — once we have all completed Green 101 — to be considered mainstream within a decade or so.

By Penny Haw - Source Business Day