Yet another informative post by Joel Makower, who this time points to a report released this month by the City of Los Angeles called “Jobs in LA’s Green Technology Sector.” Makower discusses how a growing number of U.S. cities and regions are trying to brand themselves as a “Silicon Valley” of the cleantech sector and THE place to go for anyone looking for green jobs. But in referring to the LA report, he also highlights the difficulting of pinpointing what a green job actually is.

“Among ‘green technology occupations’ listed are electricians, carpenters, plumbers, laborers, and secretaries — not typically the tree huggers that come to mind when one thinks about ‘green jobs.’ Therein lies both the problem and the promise of green- and clean-tech jobs. The problem is how to define a clean/green job from a conventional one. What, exactly, is the substantive difference in job descriptions between a ‘green’ plumber and her non-green counterpart?”

The distinction isn’t clear. That said, I think more municipalities and states/provinces need to make an attempt to quantify the general job opportunities across the spectrum of green industries and within traditional industries, and then drill down to identify specific jobs that require special training to count them as “green.” Has it been done in Toronto, or Ontario, or Canada for that matter? Not to my knowledge, though I wouldn’t be surprised if Vancouver has gone through the effort.

In Canada, we know that there will be 17,000 needed in technical positions in the electricity sector over the next 10 years, though not necessarily to support green power. We know that 13,000 jobs will need to be filled in the wind industry by 2012 if current growth rates hold up, and that more than a third of those jobs will need to be skilled, specialized workers. According to the Ontario Centres of Excellence, we know that Canada’s educational infrastructure with respect to renewable energy technology is “still on the drawing board” and that ”demand for renewable energy specialists will outstrip supply from existing programs.” Today, most renewable energy practitioners are self-taught or have been trained through programs in other countries.

And that’s just renewable energy — it doesn’t take into account the other cleantech jobs out there that touch conservation, advances in new materials, water technologies, etc… the list is quite long and perhaps for this reason we can only expect a focus on renewable energy for now.

The Ontario Centres of Excellence Energy Centre is working on an in-depth study of the labour situation in the province’s energy industry, including ”gap analysis” of jobs supply, future job demand, and the state of educational and training programs required to support it. The results are expected sometime this fall, so hopefully we’ll have something to chew on at that time.

I’m not sure what to expect from this initiative, but I imagine it won’t drill down into specifics. That’s why cities such as Toronto need to conduct their own studies that identify cleantech players in their region, look at green job opportunities within traditional sectors, and forecast where the market is expected to go over the next decade or so. I get e-mails every day from individuals — everyone from electricians to software programmers — looking to apply their skills in some kind of cleantech or green job. They’re frustrated at the lack of information out there, and so am I.

It’s for this reason that more Canadian cities, particularly so-called world class cities like Toronto, need to get their act together. Not only must the green industries under their nose be recognized, the opportunities in those industries need to be fully explored and layed out for the workforce to see and pursue.

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