Green Jobs Research Development Workshop

Description

One of the greatest challenges of our time is the climate crisis. This is reflected in the UK government's aim to become a net zero economy by 2050 (BEIS, 2021), and to halt the decline of species by 2030 (UK Government’s Environment Improvement Plan 2023). Given the importance of green jobs to such a transition, there is much interest in this area from the academic, policy and business communities.

This is clearly articulated in the UK’s Ten Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution, which places “green jobs at the heart of our economic revival”, and the government’s positive response to the Skidmore Review, which calls for “robust regional green job statistics – ideally at local authority level”.

Internationally, empirical testing of green growth theories has been hampered due to the lack of consensus as to what constitutes a green job. This has also made the comparison of cross-country studies challenging. While in the UK, empirical studies on green jobs have further been limited due to the lack of availability of robust, large-scale data.

Workshop aims

The aim of the workshop is to bring business leaders, policy makers and academics together to push forward the green jobs research agenda, particularly in relation to the UK.

In order to do so, delegates will be provided with an update on the Office of National Statistics work on defining green jobs, as well as an overview of the work undertaken by the University of the West of England’s (UWE) Sustainable Economies Research Group (SERG), which documented the current state of knowledge in international empirical studies into green jobs.

The workshop will be interactive with delegates invited to identify the most pressing areas of interest for the different communities.

Through facilitated discussions, the aim is to stimulate research ideas and identify areas of common interest between attendees. The output of the discussions will be a report identifying and prioritising the most important research areas/questions to the different communities.

Who is behind the workshop?

The workshop is a collaboration between:

• The University of the West of England’s Sustainable Economies Research Group
• The Office for National Statistics (ONS)
• The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero
• The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra)
• The West of England Combined Authority (WECA)

Who should attend

We anticipate the workshop to be attended by a roughly equal mix of business leaders, policy makers (including government analysts in policy areas), and researchers (in academia, government, or the third/private sectors). Specifically, this workshop should be of interest to:

• Policy makers and business leaders with specific questions not currently (or obviously) addressed by existing research.
• Policy makers and business leaders wishing to explore the potential for research collaborations in their areas of research interest.
• Researchers and policy makers who have an interest in the definition of green jobs.
• Researchers who have (or would like to develop) an interest in analysis of green jobs.
• Researchers looking to identify and explore new green job research areas.

Programme