Green Skills, Strong Economy Starts with Training

Today, I read the tragic announcement that Australia’s only commercial-scale solar plant will shut in March, axing about 200 jobs.

The solutions for the global financial crisis and the global climate crisis could coincide in Australia, with Kevin Rudd’s recent announcement of $187 to create an additional 56,000 training places this year. This presents an opportunity for 10,000 of these places to go to green skills, leading to green job creation and a stronger, green economy.

Australia is facing a skills shortage, and a greenhouse gas surplus.

Rudd’s new training places present an ideal opportunity to increase Australia’s green skills base, while contracting our carbon waistline.

Understandably, workers are already worrying about their jobs, and for the unemployed, the current financial situation is looking even more dire. Whilst many sections of the economy are contracting, and will continue to due to the global credit crunch, the green economy is still booming. This means continued green job growth, should we harness its opportunities.

The global renewable energy industry was worth about $100 billion this year, and is estimated to rise to $750 billion within a decade. This market will create hundreds of thousands of new, green jobs: family-supporting, career-track, vocational, or trade level employment in environmentally-friendly fields.

Rudd’s announcement on training places coincides with the release of a powerful book by acclaimed US activist and political advisor Van Jones called The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution can Fix our Two Biggest Problems.

The one solution, of course, is green-collar jobs: blue-collar employment that has been upgraded to jobs that improve environmental quality. Examples include people to audit and retrofit homes to make them energy efficient, electricians who install solar panels, plumbers who install solar hot water heaters, farmers engaged in organic agriculture; construction workers who build green buildings, wind farms, solar farms and wave energy farms.

Now that Kevin Rudd is about to announce his carbon pollution reduction targets for 2020, we must also turn our minds to the issue of green skills and green jobs. Who are the people he is expecting to do the work to implement his targets and are they adequately trained? The answer is that Australia does not yet have the “green workforce” we need to implement the policies we need to pass on energy efficiency, on renewable energy, on green buildings, public transport, and more.

The doubling of the training places in the Productivity Places Program from 57,000 to 113,000 takes the Government’s total investment in training places to more than $400 million since April 2008.

As a start, at least 10,000 of these training places should be earmarked for green skills training. This could be the first plank in a broader strategy of a national green-collar job program, designed in partnership with employers, Unions, registered training organisations, and environment groups.

Prime Minister Rudd & Deputy Prime Minister Gillard – will you ensure that 10,000 of these new places will train Australians in the green skills they need to be effective in the new, green economy?