|
Careers in Climate Change
By LISA A. SWENARSKI DE HERRERA
Today, you can actually make money and help the planet. This is because
climate change is now recognized by governments and the private sector as a
problem that must be confronted, and many industries need experts to help
reduce their carbon footprint and their energy costs.
American Fulbright scholar Alexis Ringwald is working on renewable energy at
The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) in New Delhi under Rajendra
Pachauri, head of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change that won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.? Before coming to India,
Ringwald earned an interdisciplinary master's degree in environmental
management from Yale University in Connecticut.
"People ask me, 'What are you going to do with that degree!'" Ringwald says.
"I tell them that anyone who gets a degree combining environmental science
or technology with business will find many opportunities these
days."?Ringwald is looking for, and will most likely find, a position with a
large corporate green team, a venture capital fund or a clean energy
entrepreneur.
Neeraj Doshi, from Kota, Rajasthan, recently returned from the United States
with a master's degree in environmental policy from the Fletcher School at
Tufts University in Massachusetts. He leads the Artha Initiative in New
Delhi, which invests in sustainable projects in land and water management
and renewable energy. "There are so many careers now in the area of
preventing climate change and the list gets longer day by day as we hit the
reality of climate change," says Doshi. "These range from developing energy
friendly technology to conducting public awareness campaigns on individuals'
impact on the climate."
Jobs are opening up across all types of sectors.
"Climate change will affect everyone and everything," says Ringwald. "Water
resources will be affected, the insurance sector will be affected. So will
agriculture companies, farmers and forestry. A lot of jobs will be 'risk
analysts' for all types of sectors."
Here are some of those jobs, many of which didn't exist a few years ago.
Carbon credits
trader: Buys and sells carbon offsets credits in the
international market for companies that need them to meet Kyoto Protocol
allocations. This is a market-driven way of efficiently allocating
resources, which reduces the overall impact of human activities on the
climate.
Clean coal technologist: Designs and
assesses technologies that span the coal-power cycle to include transport,
preparation, pre-combustion and post combustion. Also includes advanced coal
conversion technologies. Clean development mechanism analyst: Gathers and
analyzes data for preparing Clean Development Mechanism projects for
validation. Applies risk management techniques to appraise projects. A
degree in engineering, environment or finance is required.
Clean energy development expert:
Assesses the climate change impact of options to mitigate greenhouse gases
through sustainable energy technologies, practices and programs. Specializes
in assessing renewable energy and energy efficiency projects.
Carbon offsets specialist: Assesses the
techno-economic potential and feasibility of reducing carbon emissions from
energy practices, clean energy technologies and renewable energy.
Demand side management planner: With
more demand than supply for energy, electrical companies need experts who
can design and implement programs on when and where to distribute power so
that peak loads are reduced and energy demand is shifted to off-peak
periods.
Energy economist: Conducts economic
assessments of the impact of macro and micro energy policies and programs
that address national and regional energy sector reforms; bulk and retail
pricing of energy supply; and the depletion, substitution and conservation
of energy resources.
Energy efficiency expert: Uses in-depth understanding of the
cause, nature and pattern of energy use in industrial, residential and
commercial applications to plan and implement energy conservation projects
and programs. Engineer: Installs improved technologies and retrofits with
better equipment.
Environmental impact assessment expert:
Studies the impact of infrastructure and industrial projects on the
environment. Assists developers to design and execute projects to minimize
their environmental impact and ensure that they comply with government
regulations.? This job is key in the banking and insurance industries that
finance or insure risky projects, such as off-shore oil rigs that could be
affected by tsunamis or coal projects that are subject to carbon laws.?
Corporations also hire these experts for their environmental strategy teams,
which assess the company's carbon footprint and the risks they face-how
changing monsoon patterns, for example, will affect their agriculture
production or the best place to buy land.
Energy pricing expert: Designs pricing
structures based on socioeconomic impact analysis of retail energy prices on
consumer behavior and willingness to pay.?
Energy auditor: Measures, maps, tracks,
computes and reports energy consumption in industrial, residential and
commercial sectors. The auditor is responsible for the identification,
system design and application of energy saving measures. Tools used include
electrical and thermal energy measurement instruments that provide
information on energy use.?
Energy efficiency finance analyst:
Assesses the financial viability of energy saving projects, including the
design of risk mitigation options through innovative financial mechanisms
such as partial credit guarantees and credit enhancement. Energy manager:
Heads the energy management function in a corporate undertaking and is
responsible for the planning of energy supplies and the economic, efficient
and environmentally sound use of energy.
LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental
Design) assessor: Assesses and certifies compliance of existing
and new residential and commercial buildings with LEED. This green building
rating system, developed and promoted by the U.S. Green Building Council,
encourages and accelerates global adoption of sustainable green building and
development practices through the creation and implementation of universally
understood and accepted tools and performance criteria. In 2007, the Indian
Green Building Council launched LEED-India, which provides building owners,
architects, consultants, developers, facility and project managers the tools
they need to design, construct and operate green buildings.
Power distribution engineer: Not a new
job but one that can save energy and reduce power outages if done well.
Responsible for planning, design, operation and maintenance of electrical
substations and electricity distribution networks. The engineer is
conversant with the operation and maintenance of electrical equipment, such
as transformers, meters, cables, switching gear, relays and instrumentation
and control systems. The job requires a degree in electrical engineering and
typically a high competence in IT applications.
Researcher: This can range from
inventing new technologies that use less fuel to gathering and analyzing
data for advocacy organizations.
Social development specialist: Works
with communities that are affected by climate change, including policy
advisers, relief workers dealing with natural disasters as well as
economists who look at investment climates and future mitigation efforts
from a financial perspective.?
Venture capitalist: Invests in hot, new
categories, such as hybrid cars and clean energy and clean water
technologies.
Weather derivative trader: Buys futures
on the international market based on weather prediction.
Please share your views on this article. Write to
[email protected]
|
Contact
[email protected]
|
123oye.com
