Original article by Greg McMillan, The Globe and Mail
November 14, 2008
Mike Johnson is an outdoors kind of guy who used to have an indoors kind of job.
About two years ago, the lure of energy conservation got the better of him and he completely switched his employment focus. The former custom framer at a downtown Toronto art gallery is now field manager for a small organic landscaping company.
"My job was unfulfilling and it felt like a job - I wanted a career," says Mr. Johnson, 36, who enrolled in a two-year environmental landscape management program at Seneca College to prepare for his new line of work.
"I wanted to immerse myself into something that I could continue to learn and grow with," he explains. "There seems to be a large market for enviro-related work."
His new employer, Green Gardeners, emphasizes low-maintenance landscaping using native plants, butterfly gardens and rainwater irrigation. Staff use fuel-efficient trucks and bike-powered trailers to haul materials, and gasoline-powered tools are banned at the four-year-old company.
The fledgling firm, and Mr. Johnson's career shift, are prime examples of the greening of the Canadian jobscape.
About 530,000 Canadian workers, about 3 per cent of the labour force, are employed in an environmentally related job, according to a report from the Environmental Careers Organization of Canada (ECO).
Energy and environmental conservation as an economic driver is being felt in every part of the country and in all industries, from developers who build ultra-green, self-sustaining homes (such as the award-winning, $700-million Dockside Green housing development in Victoria) to big companies that switch to alternative fuels and cleaner technologies.
Many types of work - such as consultants who assess your home for energy rebates, or companies that measure your carbon footprint - didn't even exist a generation ago.
HOT JOBS
Grant Trump, president and chief executive officer of Calgary-based ECO Canada, says there's no question that environmental and energy concerns are translating into jobs - and new kinds of jobs.
Mr. Trump says hot careers include environmental engineers, environmental technician and technologists, conservation biologists, environmental communications officers and geographic information system analysts (people who use digital mapping techniques to measure such things as air and water quality or logging rates).
"The fields that are the key drivers for growth in the sector are water quality, waste management, land quality and restoration, and reclamation operations," Mr. Trump says.
Another key environmental sector, however, is showing the strain of the current global economic downturn.
Renewable energy companies, especially those in the biomass, solar and wind power sectors, are taking a hit as investors and venture capitalists hunker down.
Some observers, such as former Talisman Energy CEO Jim Buckee, think the clean-tech boom is going bust. But others, citing the commitment of governments and citizens around the world to find sustainable energy sources, believe the sector will pick up once the financial storms settle.
Meanwhile, even with the strong public desire for a greener, cleaner planet, it's a challenge for some employers to find the right workers for enviro-jobs.
