Project Blog: March 2026
Demystifying Green Skills: Why green skills matter
Author: Lauren Roberts-Turner
Promoting Green Skills acquisition is a way of supporting everyone to understand their role in climate action, in wider planetary preservation and in contributing to a just transition to a green economy. However, the notion of Green Skills is not widely understood. To tackle this our “Green Skills for Green Jobs” project brings together universities already active in Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), employers and students. Through collaborative workshops they are exploring how well universities are preparing students to meet the needs of employers and for planetary protection and how different stakeholders feel about navigating green upskilling.
Our approach
This project has chosen not to develop yet another framework to add to the already substantial number of green skills frameworks. Instead, we have drawn on existing work by UNICEF about how green skills knowledge can best be understood.
The UNICEF framework categorises green skills into:
- Skills for green jobs that include occupational and technical skills such as data analysis, engineering skills and project management
- Life skills or transferable skills applicable to any career such as adaptability, teamwork and critical thinking
- Transformative skills such as systems thinking, coalition building, and future thinking, all of which help foster transformative change (UNICEF 2024)
What are green skills for ?
The starting points we use in this project to address this question are:
The skills needed by the workforce, in all sectors and at all levels, in order to help the adaptation of products, services and processes to the transformations due to climate change and to environmental requirements and regulations.
(OECD and European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training 2014, 16)
Greening the economy in a way that is as fair and inclusive as possible to everyone concerned, creating decent work opportunities and leaving no one behind.
(International Labour Organization 2024)
It is also important to reflect on how young people, themselves, interpret green skills. Over 1000 young people globally defined green skills as:
The necessary knowledge, attributes and competencies to create a fairer, more sustainable future for all. Green skills are interdisciplinary, and must include both technical and soft skills, such as critical thinking, problem solving, systems thinking and digital skills…
(SOS-International 2024, 9)
Overall, green skills are those that enable the whole workforce to make a positive difference for society and the environment.
Demystifying green skills
“Are green skills relevant to my future?” is still the most common response I receive when telling my friends about this project. Such confusion highlights the need to demystify green skills.
Three common green skill myths, debunked:
- “Only people with environmental or scientific qualifications have green skills and can apply for green jobs”
As highlighted by UNICEF, transferable skills such as empathy, collaboration and critical thinking are crucial to effectively understand and tackle the climate crisis (UNICEF 2024, 6) and other social and environmental challenges. Nongreen job titles make up over half ‘all green hires’ while green jobs are available across skill levels with around 80% ‘accessible with vocational training’ (C40 2025, 5; LinkedIn 2025, 4). - “Green skills are too expensive to learn and implement"
As with other aspects of the green transition, the cost of inaction is far greater than the cost of action (Janser and Boitard 2023). ‘Investing in green skills brings significant long-term economic benefits’ with green skills now providing a competitive edge to individuals and employers (C40 2025, 6; LinkedIn 2025, 2–4). - “Green jobs are only available in new industries"
The green transformation as with other significant changes in employment is taking place within current jobs, with new occupations making up only a small share of green roles (Janser and Boitard 2023). Transforming education to support Green Skills will enable everyone to be able to adapt throughout their careers to the shifting requirements of supporting a just transition to a green economy.
Our project, “Green Skills for Green Jobs”
Our project works from the starting points and the UNICEF framework outlined above to support employers, academics and students to assess current educational practice in Higher Education and to think together about what more needs to be done.
One of my highlights of the project so far has been supporting workshops at Oxford Brookes University and De Montfort University to hear directly from students about what they want to learn and how they want to be supported to play a meaningful role in a green transition.
In the next blog I'll share some findings of what not only students but also employers and university staff are telling us. By then we should also have our workshops at Aston, Manchester Metropolitan and Exeter universities completed. Stay tuned!
Project Blog: December 2025
A Youth Perspective on the Green Skills for Green Jobs CEP
Author: Lauren Roberts-Turner
My name is Lauren, and I’m excited to be working as a Research Assistant at Students Organising for Sustainability UK (SOS UK) on the Green Skills for Green Jobs QAA-funded Collaborative Enhancement Project.
I have recently graduated from a Political Economy degree at King’s College London, and I’m really energised to be part of this project as it combines my research interest in a just transition with my background in youth policy. Away from work and study, I love books, eating cheese, staying in youth hostels and thinking about how we can make the climate transition as positive as possible!
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What are the project’s aims?
The project brings together universities already active in Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), employers and students to explore the alignments between ESD, current employability skills commitments, green workforce needs and how different stakeholders feel about navigating green upskilling.
To date we have mapped the green skills literature and assembled all the evidence for employer demand for green skills. We’ll be adapting and reverse engineering the Project Drawdown-Aligned Business Framework and the UNICEF Skills for a Green Transition 2024 framework (building on Kwauk and Casey 2021) to develop an understanding of how universities are already addressing technical, transferable and transformative green skills and areas in need of further improvement.
Currently, we’re planning the workshops that all the universities will be running, to explore:
- How ‘ready’ and equipped students feel with green skills
- Educator perspectives on the successes and challenges of green upskilling to date
- What employers would like to see from graduates’ technical, transferable and transformative skills to address the social and environmental challenges we face
The outputs of the project, due in the summer of 2026, will centre on guidance to universities on how to conceptualise and develop green skills, and to policy makers on how to create a supportive policy environment.
Why does the project matter for young people?
This is an exciting and potentially impactful project because it is an approach to green skills that centres student voice whilst actively listening to educators and employers and connects together their perspectives to create a shared vision of green skills for green jobs.
As the job market becomes more challenging to navigate and the future becomes more uncertain amidst climate change and new technologies, it is difficult to know what skills you should have and if your education is helping you to develop them. In this environment many students are starting to question the value of university education for employability. Yet the demand for green skills is growing and universities, we would argue, do have a central role in equipping the workforce of the future to meet that demand. What’s more, through this project’s inclusive approach to green skills I have come to realise that all jobs can be green jobs, and all students can contribute to sustainability upon graduation.
So, if you’re a student, employer or educator connected to one of the partner universities and interested in the project, please do come along to a workshop or get in touch, we’d love to hear from you! You can get in touch with the project leads at Oxford Brookes at either kcripps@brookes.ac.uk or jlouw@brookes.ac.uk.
What am I most looking forward to?
I can’t wait to witness how the project progresses and to hear directly from students about their thoughts on green skills and how they might use them to shape their future. Excitingly, I will shortly get to join and observe the first Oxford Brookes workshop as part of my role.
Thanks for reading and I look forward to updating you on the project’s progress.
Lauren Roberts Turner, SOS UK