Green jobs sprout in the corporate corridor

Companies with an urge to be politically correct and responsible are spawning a new breed of managers to spearhead their green initiatives.

As a result, the demand from India Inc for ‘green experts’ - people trained in green technologies and environment specialists — is going up.

Some of the hot green jobs include development and launch of innovative green building products, training and awareness, renewable energy, manufacturing and advisory services, setting up of material testing laboratories, new air-conditioning systems such as geothermal, wind towers, tunnel air-conditioning.

Gaurav Gupta, the India director of The Climate Project-India (TCPI), the former US Vice President Al Gore’s advocacy for a green planet, said, “The recent trend is to incorporate the green mission in every sector of functioning. And employing people who are trained to work in these sectors for energy-preservation is catching on.”

Not surprisingly then, India’s first green jobs fair held recently, was a sellout with some 6,000 people and 27 NGOs pitching their credentials for jobs and projects.

The Confederation of Indian Industry-Godrej Green Business Centre, an advisory body on eco-friendly initiatives, has seen an uptick in corporates adopting green practices.
S Srinivas, principal counsellor of CII-Godrej Green Business Council, said, “Our green building initiative started in 2001 with just 3-4 projects and has trained 20-25 firms to provide advice to corporates and other companies on green initiatives. This means there is already an increase in advisory services for green teams in corporates.”

Over the last eight years, CII has generated 6,000-7,000 positions based on the ‘green job’ concept.

He said, “Green jobs worth Rs 100 crore have been created through green architecture, advisory services for corporates, energy simulation in buildings, and commissioning of buildings.”

Infosys is one such company that caught on early to the green jobs.

“We started our green initiative in 2007 with a team of six specialists who understand energy leakages and prepare a counter technology in order to shift from
environment-compliance to environment leadership,” Rohan M Parikh, head of ‘Green Initiatives’ team at Infosys, said.

“Students pursuing environmental engineering, domain specific knowledge have tremendous opportunities in joining the green team,” he said.

Likewise, Wipro, too, has an ‘Eco-Energy’ unit specifically to monitor energy efficiency in the organisation. ITC and HSBC are some of the bigwigs that have also developed their own green initiatives.

However, the absence of environment-specific training courses is one of the main reasons why a large number of people are still unaware of the potential for green jobs, said industry experts.