Renewable energy engineer, energy account manager, carbon management consultant, carbon logistics specialist ... the variety of job titles is mind-boggling but they all have one thing in common: climate change.
Public awareness and government policy are putting pressure on companies to be seen to go green. And the opportunities for those who literally fancy saving the world are growing.
“One of the first things that businesses need to do is to assess their impact [on the environment] and understand what their carbon emissions are as a business,” says Tom Leathes, a director at Acre Resources, a specialist recruitment consultancy. “They need qualified experts to come in and measure these impacts and then present them in such a way as is understandable for the organisation.”
People charged with carbon management usually have a relevant degree, such as geography, and may have an MSc in environmental audit, for example. “It’s quite techy, but with an ethical and political bent,” Leathes says. At a more senior level, risk managers help companies to predict how climate change will affect their business; for example, the way that local temperature rises and population migration might affect business supply chains. “The job title climate change manager, which is very risk based, is becoming more prevalent,” he says.
It’s not just large manufacturers, energy companies and airlines that need to tackle their carbon emissions; consumer brands are keen to jump on the environmental bandwagon and put a green halo on their logo. The telecommunications giant BT has a dedicated corporate social responsibility (CSR) team of 20 people.
“It’s made up of a mixture of people. Some of them are specialists, but CSR is a broad church,” says Adrian Hosford, the director of corporate responsibility at BT. “We don’t necessarily demand that people have a masters in environmental science. [But] some do.
“There are a number of ways in. At a more junior level you need people who understand the science and technology. The other way in is as a normal business person, through your commercial experience.”
Hosford says that he recruits people who are “quite passionate” and “determined to make a positive difference to the planet and to society”. Communication and influencing skills are also important tools in persuading people across the business to change their ennergy-wasting ways. Climate change sits alongside health and safety, diversity and work-life balance under the CSR umbrella at BT but, according to Andy Cartland, a director at Acre Resources: “It won’t be long before entire teams focusing on climate change become the norm.”
Working to halt climate change is not for shrinking violets. “It’s quite a brave new world. It’s not right for everybody,” says Sue Welland, founder and creative director of the CarbonNeutral Company, a carbon offset and climate consultancy. Among others, the business employs a specialist marketing team to help clients to tell their staff – and the wider world – about their carbon-management programmes; a sales and business development team that meets clients to assess and reduce their “carbon risk”; and a “rapidly expanding” carbon team with the task of negotiating carbon credits with project developers around the world to offset clients’ carbon emissions. Some on the carbon team are former City traders.
“You’ve got to be ... entrepreneurial and interested in global issues,” Welland says. “You have to be very numerate and bright because you are dealing with a clean sheet of paper.” Every business is different, with a different carbon footprint, so there are no off-the-peg solutions.
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