Ten Years of SE² #4: Skills for the Job

Rachael posted a great blog recently about the importance of placing people at the centre of the climate change debate. Too often, we focus our attention on this piece of technology or that stream of funding, and ignore the fact that a changing climate will impact on how each of us lives. It is through changing our everyday behaviours and choices that we have a chance of mitigating the problem, at least in part.

For this instalment of our 10^th birthday blogathon, I thought I’d carry on the theme and talk about the importance of skills.

First, a definition. In layman’s terms, knowledge is the information needed to think about a problem, while skills are the tools available to do something about it (with apologies to HR professionals everywhere). That distinction is helpful when we’re thinking about the climate change debate. We know a lot, but we don’t always know what to do about it or how to do it. This could range from the simple – “I know that eco-driving is a good idea but I don’t know how to do it” – to the highly complex – “I know that airtightness matters but I’m not sure how to make it happen”.

SE² has always been involved with skills, in part because of Liz’s background in organisational design and HR consulting, and in part because we’re slightly obsessed by the “people question”. Rachael led an amazing review of the energy efficiency and renewables skills landscape in London a few years ago, looking at numbers, knowledge, skills and training capacity across a vast range of industry sectors, and helping to inform strategic thinking at the GLA. In parallel, we were carrying out a more esoteric project, working with the then London Development Agency to define “green skills”. This had a practical outcome – helping the LDA figure out who was eligible for a green skills fund – but also a wider outcome as it helped map a landscape for green skills across the capital and indicate which sectors might be priorities for investment or intervention.

More recently, we have produced Skills for Low Carbon Buildings, for the RIBA, and a guide to skills, training and accreditation for installers, as part of the Institute for Sustainability’s set of retrofit guides.

One thing that we’ve absolutely noticed over the past decade is the change in sustainability skills available from our schools and universities. Most of the people who have worked with us have been graduates and, as the years have passed, many have had Master’s degrees focusing on sustainability topics. These barely existed when we started in 2004, and it’s testament to the higher education sector that they have recognised the need for education in sustainability if we’re going to tackle the climate change challenge.

But sustainability, particularly in the built environment, still feels as though it’s a cottage industry, with expertise concentrated amongst a small group of individuals and organisations. We have not yet had the breakthrough where the skills to deliver what we need have reached into the mainstream. In some sectors, skills have been forced through: the changes to Building Regulations which made condensing boilers the norm had a dramatic effect on skills among heating installers. And the combination of supportive funding from FITs plus a persistent focus on quality through MCS have both expanded the market for solar PV design and installation and driven up standards.

The difficulty is that we need more, and we don’t have time to wait. Our carbon budgets are a constant reminder that we need to keep working, and any time lost through stop/start in the market is time that has to be caught up later.  

What’s the solution? This is where I have a tendency to get all statist, and start calling for national infrastructure programmes, a proper Green New Deal, public money invested in the undoubted public good of energy efficiency and renewable energy, public transport and a more sustainable economy. Companies will always innovate, but the whole point of innovation is that only one or two people are doing it: that’s why it’s exciting, that’s why it’s risky, and that’s why it brings a premium when it works. But if we’re aiming for scale, perhaps only Government has the power to achieve what we need, whether it’s through regulation, incentives or new standards, all of which can drive changes in skills across whole industries.

We’re proud to be part of the sustainability sector; it’s at the heart of what we do. The sector has changed significantly but not completely in the past ten years. Business, local authorities, schools, communities: all are playing a much bigger part in transforming how we live and work to be more sustainable. Whether that transformation will be big enough or fast enough rests in the hands of Government; perhaps the skill that we most need for a sustainable future is leadership.

We’d love to hear what you think, about skills for sustainability, gaps in the market, and how we expand the sector to deliver the transformation that we need. Get in touch on Twitter with @se2limited or email liz.warren@se-2.co.uk.