There has never been a better time to get a job in climate tech:
Nations and corporations are setting ambitious carbon goals. The U.S. government is enacting plans unleashing billions of dollars to address climate change. Many investors remain bullish on climate tech startups. Job prospects in the space are relatively rosy while traditional tech giants layoff thousands.
Climate career opportunities include everything from installing solar panels and electric vehicle charging devices to innovating cutting-edge climate tech hardware and software.
At first it seemed like a niche sector for new jobs, said Yin Lu, partner with MCJ Collective. But now "it's literally everywhere," she said.
New evidence keeps emerging on job growth in the sector, and there are even warnings about shortages of both blue- and white-collar climate workers. On the installation and manufacturing side, U.S. clean energy companies have announced more than 100,000 new jobs since the August passage of the Inflation Reduction Act. Globally, the current 6 million jobs in clean energy manufacturing could more than double to 14 million by 2030, according to a new report from IEA, an intergovernmental nonprofit.
[...] Part of the challenge in prepping students for the field is how quickly some historically fringe technologies — hydrogen fuel, fusion power and carbon capture among them — are emerging as significant players. Many universities don't yet have robust programs in these areas. Schwartz said that's OK.
"Anybody who's trained as an engineer or scientist has the foundational skills to go into those areas," he said. "The sector is nascent. It's just premature to be doing specialized training to fill the need."
And climate tech startups are proving resourceful in adapting talent. In the fusion field, for example, companies are nabbing experienced folks from aerospace to fill roles.
[...] "The clean tech sector is probably the area of greatest growth," said Maud Daudon, the program's executive leader. While there's great potential in the space, she said, it's evolving so fast that it's challenging to keep up, leaving the organization struggling to nail down specifics on worker roles and demand.
(Score: -1, Troll) by crafoo on Saturday February 11, @06:01AM (3 children)
It really is all so tiresome. Well, we will all have government jobs (in all but name) once they nationalize the energy sector. I bet they do food production too. Right around the time we get digital-only, centralized currency.
Do we all really want this? Endless subsidies for solutions that won't work to a fake problem created by an international clique of transatlantic bankers to subdue and fully enslave Western national economies.
(Score: 5, Touché) by Opportunist on Saturday February 11, @09:51AM
You might want to check the tinfoil on your hat, I think it's leaking.
(Score: 3, Informative) by acid andy on Saturday February 11, @01:04PM
Oh the climate crisis is a real problem. It's just the popular solutions that are fake [economist.com].
One example is where they basically create a load of new carbon emissions and then claim to be "offsetting" them by supposedly protecting an existing area of forest from being cut down--and in many cases that wouldn't have happened anyway. It's useless because they're still increasing net carbon emissions compared to the past. They should be rewilding new areas.
Master of the science of the art of the science of art.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Gaaark on Saturday February 11, @01:10PM
Yeah: let's keep subsidizing the fossil fuel industry instead. And once it's gone or too expensive to buy, waddayagonnado?
Start now, developing better tech, or stay with the old, dying industry: i know where i wanna put my money.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Saturday February 11, @09:06AM
The US government will prop up the private sector's employment market by increasing the number of public sector hires - funded by more debt.
I'm not saying it's a bad thing, as unchecked unemployment would be worse, and the debt is so abysmal already it doesn't really matter if we run up more of it at this point. But call it like it is: a New Deal kind of policy.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Opportunist on Saturday February 11, @10:02AM (3 children)
Back when I started in security, having a "somehow computer related" degree was plenty. Not only was there no specialized degree available at all, you also had plenty of time to grow into the field. Because both sides, attackers and defenders, had to learn from scratch. There was no metasploit, there was no exploit-db, exploits were not widely known, hell, most were not even found yet, nobody knew these things were actually "a thing". You'd simply pick them up along the way as they got developed.
Today, having to learn this "on the go" is nearly impossible because there is simply too much out there that you're pretty much expected to know already before you start with the "and then on top of that" part. When I talk to someone freshly out of college about a CSRF, I expect them to know what I'm talking about because knowing this will be required to understand what I try to tell him, and the same applies everywhere, from certificates to ciphers to webshells. I expect him to know that, because that's what we build on.
So he will need a specialized degree to have all that.
With "green tech", we're today where we were with security in the 90s where I started. A mostly untilled field with plenty of time to learn and grow into. A general degree will probably also be more useful since we don't know yet what will fly and what won't (hint: I think the whole "carbon capture" might be chasing ghosts in many directions... just saying), and there's a lot of ground work still to be done.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Saturday February 11, @04:10PM (2 children)
> So he will need a specialized degree to have all that.
In my field, we take graduates and expect that they do nothing for 1-2 years while they learn the basic skills. By the time they get a PhD (3-4 years) they are reasonably capable. If your field is big enough to merit a specialised degree, where you don't need to train new recruits, you should consider yourself lucky.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 11, @09:39PM
This.
I work in research with MDs and PhDs up the yin yang. Assume nobody knows ANYTHING and you will be pleasantly surprized occasionally that somebody knows something. If you go around with High Standards you are going to end up in the room with all the other bullshit merchants. Congratulations on the promotion!
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Sunday February 12, @10:17AM
Well, yeah, not exactly 1-2 years (if you don't mind me asking, what's that field? 1-2 years for someone who already has the "theory" down seems insanely long), but we do expect a new "security degree" holder out of college to take about 3-6 months of hand-holding before we let him run free on our systems. We also would expect that he hones his skills with the training we provide and spends some of his spare time on it, because, well, let's be honest here, that's what we all do. Some more, some less, granted, it's not exactly expected that you spend your vacation on HTB or toying with new developments in your chosen special field, but it's also not exactly frowned upon.