Green Jobs Contents

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1Green jobs ambitions

Introduction

1.We launched our inquiry into Green jobs and the just transition on 17th November 2020,1 following the Government’s announcements of its ambitions to ‘create 2 million green jobs’ by 2030,2 the allocation of £3bn ‘to support 140,000 green jobs’ through the Treasury’s Plan for Jobs,3 and the £40m Green Recovery Challenge Fund for jobs in nature recovery.4 To support these ambitions, the Government convened a Green Jobs Taskforce, chaired by Ministers from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and Department for Education, which worked with representatives from industry, trade unions and the skills sector to ‘support the UK to transition to a net zero economy and deliver a green recovery, by developing recommendations for an action plan to support 2 million good quality, green jobs and the skills needed by 2030’.5

2.The day after our inquiry was launched, the Prime Minister issued his Ten Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution, ‘to create and support up to 250,000 highly-skilled green jobs in the UK’.6 Over the course of this inquiry, the Government has released further net zero, skills and environmental policy papers which have a potential impact on its ambitions for the creation of green jobs, including the Energy White Paper,7 the Treasury’s Net Zero Review: Interim Report,8 Skills for Jobs White Paper,9 Build Back Better policy paper,10 a £40m second round of the Green Recovery Challenge Fund,11 National Bus Strategy for England,12 Industrial Decarbonisation Strategy,13 North Sea Transition Deal,14 England Trees Action Plan,15 England Peat Action Plan,16 Transport Decarbonisation Plan17 and UK Hydrogen Strategy,18Heat and Buildings Strategy,19 Net Zero Strategy20 and the final report of the Treasury’s Net Zero Review.21 In October 2021, the Government announced that 56,000 UK green jobs had been ‘secured and created’ since November 2020.22

3.Throughout this inquiry we have examined how green jobs could help tackle the anticipated rise in unemployment due to covid-19 in a sustainable way; the jobs, skills and training needed to achieve the UK’s longer-term climate and environmental ambitions; and the planning and work taking place to meet the Government’s green jobs ambitions. In this report we address the jobs and skills issues identified in our recent reports on Electronic Waste and the Circular Economy,23 Growing back better: putting nature and net zero at the heart of the economic recovery,24 Energy Efficiency of Existing Homes25 and Biodiversity in the UK: bloom or bust?26 Our predecessor Committee previously looked at green jobs and skills in 2009.27

4.Our call for evidence received over 65 written submissions. These showcased the breadth of job opportunities in roles with the potential to contribute to positive environmental outcomes across the UK, encompassing the construction of straw-bale buildings,28 manufacture of bioplastics,29 solar panel installation,30 running eBikes schemes,31 retrofit of diesel busses to electric and hydrogen,32 greening urban roofs,33 and chemical recycling,34 among many, many others. We heard from 27 witnesses during our oral evidence sessions, representing the education and skills sector, local government, employers and industry, and four Government departments. We also held a roundtable event with a small number of young people, to hear their perspectives on green jobs; illustrative anonymised quotes from the event are included in the Annex, and we have summarised the discussion where relevant throughout the report.

5.The five report chapters cover the five broad themes arising from the evidence we gathered: how the Government is organised to achieve its green jobs ambitions; jobs and skills for a green covid-19 recovery; jobs and skills in the delivery of the Government’s long-term environmental goals and its ambitions for a just transition to net zero; ensuring a green skills pipeline; and diversity, inclusion and access to green jobs. Contributors told us that green jobs were essential to the delivery of the Government’s green ambitions,35 and a significant number of contributors stressed the importance of clear policy signalling from the Government, to provide sectors with the confidence to invest in green jobs.36

6.We welcome the Government’s ambitions for green job growth in the UK; now the Government needs to set out how these will be delivered. This report sets out our recommendations for how the Government should take this forward

Measuring green jobs

7.The Government aims to ‘create 2 million green jobs’ in the UK by 2030.37 The Government’s 10 Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution sets out an ambition to support 90,000 green UK jobs within this Parliament and up to 250,000 by 2030 across the ten sectors, or ‘points’, covered in the plan.38 The ambition for 2 million green jobs by 2030 was repeated in the Green Jobs Taskforce Terms of Reference39 and report.40 Mike Hemsley, of the Climate Change Committee (CCC), told us the target of 2 million green jobs by 2030 seemed ‘right for meeting the scale of the challenge’ of the UK’s environmental ambitions.41

8.The Government has not set out a definition of ‘green jobs’, or how it will measure progress towards its ambitions. There is no generally-accepted standard definition of a ‘green job’, nor single way to quantify them. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) estimates the number of UK green jobs in two ways:

i)UK employment in the Environmental Goods and Services Sector (EGSS), defined as ‘areas of the economy engaged in producing goods and services for environmental protection purposes, as well as those engaged in conserving and maintaining natural resources’.42 ONS uses 17 relevant activities to estimate EGSS employment in the UK.43 The latest estimate indicates 403,100 people were employed in the UK EGSS in 2018.44

ii)Information collected from businesses through the Low Carbon and Renewable Energy Economy (LCREE) survey, focussing on (a different) 17 sectors deemed low-carbon or related to renewable energy and defined as ‘economic activities that deliver goods and services that are likely to help the UK generate lower emissions of greenhouse gases, predominantly carbon dioxide’.45 The latest estimate indicates 202,100 people were employed in the UK LCREE in 2019.46

9.The International Labour Organisation (ILO) defines green jobs as ‘decent jobs that contribute to preserve or restore the environment, be they in traditional sectors such as manufacturing and construction, or in new, emerging green sectors such as renewable energy and energy efficiency.’47 We decided at the outset of our inquiry that we would start from, but not be limited by, this definition, to consider the range of green jobs and explore what defines a ‘green job’.

10.The ONS identify two further ways green jobs could be measured: the sectoral approach, which involves identifying relevant sectors, e.g. renewable energy, and either assuming all jobs in this sector are ‘green’ or deciding which jobs within the sector are ‘green’ and which are not;48 and O*NET, a United States database, which sorts jobs in sectors that could make up a ‘green economy’ into three categories, based on the interaction between skills and the transition to a greener economy.49

11.Contributors to the inquiry differed in their definitions of a ‘green job’. Luke Murphy, of the Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR), told us IPPR included ‘professions that are needed to secure a sustainable economy, such as health and care workers’.50 Several other contributors considered social care a green job,51 with the Greener Jobs Alliance noting that ‘jobs in the care and emergency sectors will be essential to deal with climate mitigation measures like health impacts, floods, and other extreme weather events’.52 The Public and Commercial Services trade union included public sector jobs that support the transition, such as job centre coaches.53 The National Association for Environmental Education argued all jobs should be considered green jobs, given the existing background of environmental laws and regulations, and the ‘moral imperative’ for all employees to take action to protect the environment.54 Several contributors observed that in a transitioning economy, there is a ‘greening’ of existing jobs alongside growth in green sectors and new green industries.55 This makes it harder to decide whether or not, or to what extent, a job is ‘green’. ONS raise the issue that even a job in a ‘green’ sector could be carried out in a way which has an adverse effect on the environment.56

12.The participants at our roundtable discussion for young people expressed a similar range of views; some considered green jobs to be focussed on the environment or low carbon transition, while others referred to broader issues of sustainability; one thought that all jobs would be green in the future.

13.Without a clear definition and metric, the Government will struggle to monitor and evaluate the impact of its policies on the number of green jobs. A clear definition and metric from the Government would be valuable to industry, too; EngineeringUK told us it would provide a ‘clearer picture’ of the future demand for the skills associated with green jobs,57 and Enginuity told us ‘if official data cannot demonstrate the growth in a given occupation, it becomes more difficult to prove the need for qualifications, apprenticeships and other […] skills programmes which meet employer priorities’.58

14.The Rt Hon Anne-Marie Trevelyan MP, then Minister for Business, Energy and Clean Growth at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, acknowledged to us the difficulties of defining a green job.59 She told us the ONS LCREE survey ‘gives a broad definition of jobs that help the UK generate lower emissions of greenhouse gases […] that will give us that breadth as we move forward’.60 However, as ONS note, LCREE excludes environmental activities beyond carbon reduction, such as recycling or protecting biodiversity, so is ‘often used in conjunction with other measures when a wider estimate of “green jobs” is required.’61

15.When we asked how the Government would measure its progress towards its green jobs targets, Minister Trevelyan told us the Government would set that out in its Net Zero Strategy,62 and this would ‘identify much more holistically some of those measurement requirements so that we have […] a benchmark from which to work.’63 When choosing a metric, ONS stress the importance of data availability: ‘while a definition is important, without relevant data, measurement using that definition is not possible.’64 To be able to assess whether its policies are leading to green jobs in the sectors and regions they are needed, the Government’s metric for counting green jobs must be able to monitor the number of green jobs by type and location. It would be efficient if this metric were also able to monitor progress on diversity and inclusion in the green workforce, incorporating our first recommendation in Chapter 5 below.

16.The Green Jobs Taskforce says a broad approach is needed; one which encompasses delivery of the UK’s environmental goals and the transition to net zero.65 The Green Jobs Taskforce defines a green job as:

employment in an activity that directly contributes to—or indirectly supports—the achievement of the UK’s net zero emissions target and other environmental goals, such as nature restoration and mitigation against climate risks.66

We agree that the Government’s definition of green jobs should encompass jobs in sectors such as nature and the circular economy which will help to deliver the Government’s wider environmental goals. It was clear from our evidence session with Ministers that the Government also considers jobs outside of delivering net zero alone to be ‘green’, through Ministers’ references to ecologists, jobs in habitat management and the circular economy, and roles in biodiversity and environmental engagement.67

17.The Government also asked the Green Jobs Taskforce to consider ‘quality of green jobs’.68 The Green Jobs Taskforce found that existing ONS measures of quality across jobs could not be analysed to see which jobs were in the green economy.69 The Green Jobs Taskforce noted ‘significant gaps’ in the wider evidence on green job quality, and said the data available ‘provides a mixed picture, with clear variations in job quality across and within sectors’, with the evidence currently suggesting that ‘not all green jobs are good jobs’.70 Several contributors to our inquiry raised the importance of job quality in green jobs.71 We welcome the Government’s commitment to ensuring that green jobs are ‘good quality’72 and support the Green Jobs Taskforce’s recommendation that the Government set out how it will ensure this.73 We emphasise that, to achieve this, the Government will need a way of measuring job quality which can be used in conjunction with its metric for green jobs.

18.The Government published its Net Zero Strategy on 19 October 2021; disappointingly, this did not contain its definition or metric for green jobs, but noted that ONS “will seek to refine [the Government’s] understanding and measurement of the green economy as the UK transitions to net zero, including looking at such issues as quality of work and diversity within the green economy.”74

19.There is no single definition, nor single way to measure green jobs. The Government’s ambitions for accelerating the number of green jobs over the 2020s are welcome, but without a clear definition and metric, the Government will be unable to assess whether its policies are leading to good quality, green jobs in the sectors and regions they are needed.

20.We recommend that, by the end of 2021, the Government set out how it will measure progress towards its green jobs targets; this should include its definition of ‘green jobs’, and how it will measure the number, type and location of these over the 2020s, for the purpose of monitoring and evaluating the impact of its policies.

Co-ordinating delivery

21.Delivery of the Government’s green jobs targets will require action across multiple Government departments, including:

• the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), which has overarching policy responsibility for net zero alongside clean energy and industrial strategy;
• the Department for Education (DfE), which has policy responsibility for education and skills;
• the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), which has policy responsibility for agriculture, fishing and the environment, including forestry and waste and resources, and overarching responsibility for the Government’s 25 Year Environment Plan and climate adaptation;
• the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), which has policy responsibility for labour market strategy;
• the Department for Transport (DfT), which has policy responsibility for clean transport, including public transport;
• the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC), which has policy responsibility for housing; and
• HM Treasury, which allocates budgets to departments.

As its green jobs ambitions are UK-wide, the Government will need to co-ordinate with the devolved administrations, given that key matters including education and environment policy are devolved, and with local government, who are also affected by the Government’s environmental policies. As Rebecca Pow MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at Defra, noted:

[…] every planning department will have to deliver biodiversity net gain. Every local authority will have to produce a local nature recovery strategy.75

22.Contributors told us a joined-up approach is needed for cross-Government action towards green jobs targets.76 The Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment (IEMA) told us:

The challenge of developing the skills and capabilities in the UK workforce to meet our climate and environmental ambitions is not new; indeed, IEMA gave evidence before the Committee in 2009 on this topic. We believe that a key reason that past initiatives have failed is that no single body has been tasked with responsibility for co-ordinating delivery. Given the long-term nature of the challenge, the need to take a strategic approach across education and skills, business and energy, environment and economic policy, a new Green Jobs and Skills Commission or similar body should be established and mandated to take forward the strategy.77

The Green Jobs Taskforce similarly recommended that the Government ‘establish a UK-wide body with national representation to ensure momentum and coherence on workforce transition, including progress in delivery’, with a remit to ‘monitor, drive and report on progress of the transition to a net zero economy that supports good quality green jobs and skills, and to recommend any additional measures required to accelerate delivery.’78

23.Given the cross-cutting nature of green jobs, it is important that the Government have effective structures in place for monitoring and co-ordinating action towards its green jobs ambitions. The National Audit Office (NAO) has found that the Government’s ‘arrangements for joint working between departments on environmental issues are patchy’.79 NAO say that the risks of poor co-ordination in cross-governmental working on areas such as net zero or long term environmental goals include: departmental priorities taking precedence over wider aims; the lack of a ‘single point of leadership’ to manage interdependencies, trade-offs or policy clashes; difficulties for a department to direct or hold others to account on their delivery, and a lack of ways for information to be shared across departments.80 It is also important for Parliament and other stakeholders to understand different bodies’ respective responsibilities in order to hold these to account effectively.

24.While BEIS and DfE were responsible for the Green Jobs Taskforce, the Government has not set out which department will take the lead on green jobs, or how action will be co-ordinated and monitored. Minister Trevelyan told us:

delivering net zero sits with BEIS, but the reality is that this is a genuinely cross-Government challenge. Every single part of Government have a part to play and have responsibilities that they need to deliver in order to help the nation reach its net zero challenge. The interesting and perhaps fair challenge that there has been patchy work has to change. […] The point of the Green Jobs Taskforce is to make sure we can give ourselves a very strong base from which to build those next-step practical changes, investments and where we go forwards.81

She told us she and the Ministers from DfE, Defra and DWP who were present at our evidence session were ‘working together all the time’.82 This is welcome; however, we think more formal structures are still needed to ensure effective co-ordination across the Government, including the other departments with responsibilities for delivering on green job ambitions as well as local authorities and the devolved administrations, to ensure policy alignment, monitor progress and identify and resolve any clashes with other departmental priorities. Such cross-Government oversight might be usefully provided by the cabinet committees on climate action,83 as long as this would also encompass green jobs and skills which are less directly related to climate action, such as those in nature or the circular economy.

25.In their Ministerial Foreword to the Green Jobs Taskforce report, Minister Trevelyan, then Minister for Business, Energy and Clean Growth at BEIS, and Gillian Keegan MP, then Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Minister for Apprenticeships and Skills) at DfE, announced ‘the formation of a cross-cutting delivery group to maintain the momentum generated by the Taskforce and drive coherent action across the green skills agenda.’84 The delivery group is to ‘include representatives from industry, the skills sector and other key stakeholders’.85 While no further details have yet been provided as to the composition of the delivery group, where it will sit within the Government or the co-ordination or monitoring arrangements which would be put in place, it is welcome that the Government will be tasking a body with delivery of its green jobs goals. To ensure effective delivery of action on green jobs across the Government, the delivery group should, as a priority, set out each department’s responsibilities, how the Government will monitor and co-ordinate delivery across Government, and how the Government will collaborate with the devolved administrations and local authorities.

26.‘Green jobs’ is a cross-cutting issue, requiring action across Government alongside co-ordination with local authorities and the devolved administrations to deliver the Government’s ambitions. Clear lines of responsibility and a mechanism for co-ordination are needed, otherwise green jobs risks being given insufficient priority within departments, constraining the Government’s efforts to develop the green jobs and skills needed in the economy.

27.We recommend that the Government, in its response to this report, set out its arrangements for cross-departmental delivery of green jobs and skills ambitions, identifying:

a)each department’s responsibilities;

b)how it will monitor and co-ordinate delivery across departments; and

c)how it will collaborate with the devolved administrations and local authorities.

We recommend that these arrangements include tasking the cabinet committees on climate action with overseeing the delivery of green jobs and skills actions across Government, ensuring that this includes oversight of departments’ actions on green jobs and skills less directly related to climate action, such as those in nature or the circular economy.

Co-ordinating funding

28.When we asked Kemi Badenoch MP, then Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, in December 2020 whether the Government would be funding a dedicated training programme to support the creation of 2 million green jobs, she told us:

That does not have its own funding stream. It draws together the £3 billion of green investment from the summer economic update and £12 billion from the 10-point plan. For example, part of the green homes grants scheme has a £6.9 million training programme via the Midlands Energy Hub, and that aims to create 5,000 installer training opportunities. We do not have a separate bucket for jobs, but within everything there is an element that will target jobs.86

29.Given action on green jobs will be spread across the Government, it is important for the costs of action on green jobs to be evaluated, so that departments can account for this in their spending plans and budgeting. The National Audit Office (NAO) says that costed plans are ‘important as otherwise there are risks that decisions about funding allocations are made in a piecemeal way, rather than on the basis of a strategic view of long-term priorities’.87 NAO say that the Government’s accountability structures, where accounting officers are ultimately responsible for spending in their department alone, can result in ‘targets and performance incentives that prioritise departmental objectives over collective government aims’.88

30.The Green Jobs Taskforce Action Plan does not contain indicative costings for its recommendations. We asked Minister Keegan whether the Government would respond to the Action Plan by working out how finance will be allocated where it is needed. She responded:

A lot of this will go into the spending review, which is usually what happens when you talk about anything to do with investment. Clearly, at some point we will say how we are going to deliver this, but we already have significant investment in skills. The green jobs skills will come underneath that skills investment, because the system itself is what we are investing in and being able to work with employers to deliver any skills shortage, whether it is in digital or in tree planting.89

In order to ensure sufficient funds are allocated to the departments responsible through the spending review, departments and the Treasury will need to understand the costs of delivery. It would be efficient if indicative costings were provided at the same time as the information setting out which departments are responsible for which action, as recommended above.

31.This should include an analysis of the funding required by local authorities to obtain the green jobs and skills they need to deliver the Government’s nature and climate objectives, including biodiversity net gain, local nature recovery schemes and net zero. The Local Government Association told us that while local authorities had the powers to support the Government’s green recovery and decarbonisation ambitions

through their services, planning and enforcement roles, housing, regeneration, economic development activities, education and skills, […] a lack of skills and capacity within councils as a result of inadequate funding poses a risk to translating the national vision locally.90

A recent NAO report we requested into local government and net zero in England found that ‘skills shortages for local authorities can be made more severe by the short term, competitive nature of much net zero funding from departments.’91 Our recent report into biodiversity in the UK recommended that the Government strengthen local authority capacity to deliver biodiversity net gain.92

32.When we asked how the additional burdens on local authorities for biodiversity net gain would be funded, Minister Pow told us:

all burdens on local authorities will be covered. Of course, delivering local nature recovery strategies is something that all local authorities will be required to do, but they can do it with an adopted partner. That might be, for example, their local wildlife trust. Many of them already have these plans under way. It will be these other bodies that already have a great deal of expertise and knowledge that will be required for the local authorities.93

In its response to our report on biodiversity in the UK, the Government said it would work with local authorities to ensure access to ‘the right training, ecological expertise and systems to deliver ecological expertise’.94 The Government said it was ‘working with the sector to understand skills and capacity needs’ and has ‘committed to funding new burdens on local authorities arising from the Environment Bill in the usual way.’95

33.The NAO report requested into local government and net zero in England similarly recommended that the Government work with local authorities to assess the skills gaps for their net zero work.96 The NAO noted that local authorities would require, at the least, ‘the spending power […] to build the skills to incorporate net zero into their existing functions such as transport planning’, highlighting that ‘notwithstanding government’s financial support to the sector during the pandemic, the financial position of local government remains a cause for concern’.97 In an evidence session with local government representatives in September 2021, Carolyn McKenzie, Chair of the Energy and Clean Growth Working Group of the Association of Directors of Environment, Economy, Planning & Transport told us:

there is quite a lot of external resource available to us for expertise. But there is a key point that, if it is embedded within the local authority, we can use that small amount of funding to capacity-build within our staff across the council so that it is more consistent and it remains there, rather than being external and then going away. That embedding enables more funding and more capacity to be built.98

34.It is important that analysis by the Government into local authority skills gaps is accompanied by an assessment of the funding requirements for the green jobs and skills needed within local authorities, to ensure local government has the green jobs and skills it needs to deliver the Government’s environmental objectives. This will require co-ordination between local government, central Government departments and the Treasury.

35.Departments need to understand the delivery costs for their green jobs responsibilities to ensure their spending plans include sufficient allocation for this. Any analysis of environmental skills needs in local government needs to be accompanied by an assessment of the funding requirements for the green jobs and skills that are needed within local authorities to deliver local government’s responsibilities towards the Government’s climate and nature objectives.

36.We recommend that by the end of 2021 the department or body with overall responsibility for delivery of the Government’s green jobs policies should, in collaboration with the different departments engaged in green jobs policy, assign indicative costings to each department’s actions within the overall green jobs delivery plan. This should include the Government’s assessment of the funding requirements for green jobs and skills needed within local authorities to deliver the Government’s climate and nature objectives.