It’s [NOT] Easy Being GREEN
Green-Collar Workforce Gains Legitimacy and Momentum
by Pam Losefsky
Signs of a Maturing Industry
A sign of the times is the establishment of a secondary market—industries that help companies meet their sustainability goals. 3Degrees, for instance, has three main lines of business: selling renewable energy certificates and carbon offsets and creating partnerships with state utilities. The company enables other companies to purchase green energy even if they are located in states that don’t have a green energy choice. Since you can’t track an electron from a wind farm in Texas to a manufacturing plant in Michigan, a commodity system has developed whereby the market is supplied with certificates that correspond to megawatt hours of renewable energy, and anyone anywhere in the United States can purchase them.“What has been pushing the supply is the increasing demand for green energy certificates—demand that goes beyond what is currently required,” Lieberman explains. “There are a lot of Fortune 500 companies—and even individuals—that have an interest in improving their environmental footprint, so they purchase cer-tificates from the compliance market, pulling supply out of that market and sending a signal to create more.” Buying the certificate has the same market impact as buying the specific renewable energy, since the proceeds go back to the wind farm or the solar array, or some other green source.
Brauner can vouch for the strengthening market—when she was first hired as a marketing manager for Green Mountain Energy in Austin in 2004, it was the only company in Texas selling a green energy product and one of only a few nationwide. “Now there are 15 to 20 players in Texas alone, and you see a lot of venture capital moving into the industry,” she says. Brauner, who is now director of marketing for Green Mountain, expects that many of the new renewable companies will merge or disappear as the field ages—not unlike what happened in the dot-com era—but she believes those with a solid foundation will survive.
Another sign of a maturing field is the presence of third-party verifiers that can guarantee standards are truly being met. “Thirdparty verifiers always make things more expensive and slow down transaction times,” Lieberman says, “but without them, consumers can’t be confident that their organic food, fair-trade coffee or renewable energy is the real deal.”
Lieberman uses the term “greenwashing” to describe companies that make overblown claims without meeting standards. In green energy specifically, Lieberman says he wouldn’t rely on anything but the Green-e standard—which has the backing of all major environmental groups. In carbon offsets, there are now several different verifiers, including the Gold Standard, Voluntary Carbon Standard and the California Climate Action Registry.
The challenge of integrating sustainable development into business is not without its frustrations. But there’s much more cause for optimism than in the past for these McCombs alumni who can say they were there at the dawn of a new field. The opportunities for MBAs to make a big difference in the world are growing by the day.
I still have a bit of a flat spot on my head from banging it against the wall over the years, but things are definitely changing,” Wilcoxon says. “While we’ve struggled with the marginality issue—after all, we’re not the decision makers, we have to influence the decisions—CSR is here to stay. It is encouraging to have people knocking on our doors for a change.”
GREEN- COLLAR JOBS
Less than 10 years into the age of corporate sustainability, the field is still small but growing rapidly. That industry growth is reflected in the passions of new students. “Many incoming students want to work on sustainability issues and plan to pursue those kinds of jobs,” says Stacey Rudnick, director of MBA Career Services at McCombs.
McCombs is responding by adding to its existing CSR offerings. This semester, John Doggett, senior lecturer, launched a new management sustainability practicum. Students in the course are doing hands-on work with Wal-Mart in the United States and China, as well as H.E.B., First Solar and a number of firms in the university’s Clean Energy Incubator.
“Management sustainability has graduated from the wilderness,” Doggett says. “With oil at $100 per barrel and climate change a reality, every sane manager must look for ways to significantly reduce how much energy their company uses and how much waste it produces. Sustainability will be one of the most explosive new entrepreneurial opportunities of the next 10 years.”
That prediction is supported by a new jobs report from the American Solar Energy Society (ASES) that indicates as many as one out of four workers in the United States will be working in the renewable energy and energy efficiency industries by 2030. ASES estimates that 40 million jobs could be created in renewable energy and energy efficiency by 2030, including millions in accounting and management.
And that’s just the clean energy industry—CSR encompasses much more.
“In almost any industry, you can find a niche related to sustainability. And if not, you can build that into your job,” Bruce Wilcoxon believes.
Even if new graduates don’t end up with the word “sustainability” in their job titles, they can definitely look for companies that are operating responsibly. Shari Carle suggests that job seekers make sure they signal to companies they’re interviewing with that they are aware of what’s going on in the world and interested in working for a company that is too.
“Students realize they probably aren’t going to get a job in CSR immediately after business school, but they want to know about CSR initiatives within the companies they are interviewing with,” says Rudnick. “I tell recruiters they should be incorporating their sustainability and CSR programs into their presentations, or they will be missing a critical selling point with our students.”