What skills are needed to support sustainable industry?

The research identifies four core groups of 'green skills'—engineering and technical, science, operation management, and monitoring—and finds that stricter environmental regulations in the US modestly increase the demand for these competencies, particularly in operations management and science. The authors argue that because most of these skills require formal education, increasing the supply of scientists and engineers is critical to reducing the costs of adopting clean production methods.

• The authors identify four primary categories of general work tasks that are significantly important for green occupations: engineering and technical skills for technology design and assessment; science skills based on physics and biology; operation management skills for organisational restructuring and life-cycle management; and monitoring skills for ensuring compliance with legal and technical regulatory requirements.
• Green occupations are primarily concentrated in two opposite ends of the skill spectrum: high-skilled professional roles, such as engineers and managers, and low-skilled roles in production and manufacturing, such as maintenance and construction workers.
• In the US, stricter environmental regulation (measured by lower emissions per capita) leads to a modest increase in the demand for general green skills. Specifically, a 50% reduction in emissions is associated with a 12.6% increase in the importance of operations management skills and a 9% increase in science skills, measured by the inter-quartile range.
• The demand for high-skilled workers, particularly those with operation management skills, is increased by import penetration. The combined effects of import penetration and environmental regulation reinforce each other regarding the demand for both operation management and monitoring skills.
• Because three of the four identified green skills require substantial formal education, the authors suggest that education policy is a critical tool for sustainable growth; increasing the supply of scientists and engineers could lower the wages for these roles, thereby reducing the cost of implementing clean production methods.

APA

Consoli, D., Marin, G., Popp, D., & Vona, F. (2015). What skills are needed to support sustainable industry? World Economic Forum. https://www.weforum.org/stories/economic-growth/what-skills-are-needed-to-support-sustainable-industry/

Chicago

Consoli, Davide, Giovanni Marin, David Popp, and Francesco Vona. What skills are needed to support sustainable industry? World Economic Forum, 2015. https://www.weforum.org/stories/economic-growth/what-skills-are-needed-to-support-sustainable-industry/.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Consoli |first1=Davide |last2=Marin |first2=Giovanni |last3=Popp |first3=David |last4=Vona |first4=Francesco |title=What skills are needed to support sustainable industry? |publisher=World Economic Forum |date=22 May 2015 |url=https://www.weforum.org/stories/economic-growth/what-skills-are-needed-to-support-sustainable-industry/ |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{consoli2015what, author = {Consoli, Davide and Marin, Giovanni and Popp, David and Vona, Francesco}, title = {{What skills are needed to support sustainable industry?}}, institution = {World Economic Forum}, year = {2015}, month = may, url = {https://www.weforum.org/stories/economic-growth/what-skills-are-needed-to-support-sustainable-industry/}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }