New jobs in a clean economy  

The "green collar jobs" concept is getting more exposure in Australia - the SMH reports on "New jobs in a clean economy".

It is shaping up to be the boom sector of the future. So-called green collar careers in renewable energies, recycling industries, green services and any other jobs contributing to better environmental outcomes are expected to grow rapidly over the next few decades.

Many of today's green jobs hardly existed 10 years ago. In the 1990s, jobs such as those of carbon trader, solar panel installer or green energy auditor sounded to many like science fiction. To really expand the future green-collar economy, skills and training initiatives - up-skilling and re-skilling - will also be necessary.

That is the finding of research commissioned by the Dusseldorp Skills Forum, a not-for-profit body, and carried out by the CSIRO. The report, Growing The Green Collar Economy, says green-collar job growth should offset and possibly exceed job losses caused elsewhere by cuts to carbon pollution.

"The traditional thinking that if you're more concerned about the environment you will lose jobs is not true," says Heinz Schandl of the CSIRO, one of the authors of the research. Using two alternative economic models, Schandl and his colleagues calculated employment growth in Australia over the next few decades, contrasting a "business-as-usual" approach with the introduction of the emissions trading scheme.

"If you design your policies well, you can actually decouple economic growth from environmental pressure," Schandl says. "Such a transition, in our research, would have little or no impact on national employment, because of shifts that happen in the economy."

It is good news that has been received with cautious optimism by those who worry about the emissions trading scheme's future impact on the economy.

"Australia can move to a clean economy and make big cuts in carbon pollution, and also grow our workforce in the next 10 to 20 years," says Phil Freeman, a climate change campaigner at the Australian Conservation Foundation. "It's a myth that action on climate change is going to destroy jobs."

The term green collar was first applied to environmental workers in the US in the mid-1970s, but only recently gained widespread currency. The US Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has helped popularise the term, promising to create "5 million green collar jobs" as part of his energy policy.