Meet The Moment Campaign:
The why

Despite the extreme achievement of having a new career cluster adopted to expose students to careers associated with energy and natural resources, there is work to be done to drive action and impact. These data points from a report prepared by LinkedIn illustrate the work to be done:

• 61% of Gen Z workers say they want to get a green job within the next five years. Fewer than 20% say that they see a clear path to getting those jobs. 
• (Fewer) than 1 in 5 Gen Z has a very good awareness of the different (clean energy) career paths to break into. 
• By 2030—an important milestone on the path to net zero—only one in 10 Gen Z workers will have sufficient green skills. Gen Z is expected to make up a third of the workforce by 2030.
• 78% for Gen Z believe that if they were offered training, they would be able to learn new or improved green skills that will allow them to perform a green job. 

And further, a recent study from GED Testing Services found that while 90% of GED learners were interested in “green careers,” fewer than 5% understood available options. Need one more data point? 9% of the industry’s workforce is comprised of Gen Z workers, yet Get Z is expected to make up 27% of the workforce in 2025.

While Gen Z expresses interest in green jobs, educators who can be instrumental in providing visibility to those jobs in the energy sector and nurturing interest into opportunity, don’t have the resources or aptitude to do so. Nearly 60 percent of polled teachers in a recent study conducted by NPR/Ipsos felt “unconfident and unprepared to weave climate change lessons into their core classes, (which poses) a serious obstacle to building an informed generation capable of addressing the challenges of the climate crisis.” Non-Profit Quarterly reports that many teachers lack educational confidence in the subject matter, noting “teaching STEM, environmental issues, and climate change is challenging for any teacher due to the vast amount of information and the speed at which it changes.”

ABOUT CEWD

CEWD is a non-profit consortium of more than 140 energy companies, associations, unions, educational institutions, and government entities working in partnership to ensure a skilled, diverse workforce pipeline for the energy industry.