Top 10 Green Jobs in the next decade! - ('WHAT ABOUT JAPAN?')

[Laurence Smith]

In preparation for the "Finding the Sustainability Job of your Dreams" (the ISSP webinar on February 25th)" I enclose a link to a Fast Company magazine article on the 'Best Green Jobs.'

Reading it made me wonder what people think are going to be the best 'Green' jobs in Japan in the next decade?

Will the list be the same as Fast Company's somewhat US-centric list? What will be different in Japan? Will anything be exportable? Does the concept of a 'Green-Collar' workforce even make sense in Japan?

The link below is
http://www.fastcompany.com/articles/2009/01/best-green-jobs.html

[Kevin Aschim]

I read your challenge to think about what the 10 Green Job Opportunities in Japan might be just prior to a long road trip and this challenge pleasantly consumed my thoughts for the entire 2 hour drive!

First of all let me say that I live in Canada and have never been further west than Hawaii so my knowledge of Japan is severely impaired! But I did try to think of this within my limited knowledge of the Japanese context as follows:

1. Japan is a major importer of energy.
2. Japan is a major importer of food.
3. Japan is heavily reliant on manufacturing technology innovation and International trade.
4. Japan has aging demographics.
5. Japan has a small land base to population and is very urbanized.

So with the context set, here are my thoughts:

1. Electrical Engineer/Technician

We have had many false starts in the movement for seeking alternative liquid transportation fuels. There was ethanol and biodiesel which is excessively consumptive on land resources. There is hydrogen which is dangerous to store and contain and which presents terrible risks to air quality with even small leakage losses. But now Japanese companies are taking the lead in developing excellent entries into the electric vehicle market.

I see electric vehicles being here to stay. I see capital costs dropping over time. I see excellent prospects for battery technology. I see operating costs being significantly lower than that for liquid fueled vehicles. I see electrical vehicles having a potentially longer life than liquid fueled vehicles and the ability to refuel in your own home, at work or at a battery swapping station being more convenient and safer and cheaper than the expensive and riskier infrastructure associated with liquid fuel distribution.

I see the environmental benefits associated with an electrical economy being far superior to any liquid fuel be it gasoline, diesel, biodiesel, ethanol or hydrogen. This is because the elimination of the internal combustion engine eliminates the release of very harmful NOx and SOx compounds into the air. These create smog, soot, smog, dangerous fine particulate matter, ground level ozone and mutagenic radicals in the air that contribute to lung cancer, heart attacks, emphysema and strokes. And EV’s are quiet. The end result is much more livable and healthier cities. An important consideration for anyone but particularly older people who are more vulnerable to disease associated with bad air quality. The fact is that implementing this technology will save hundreds of thousands of lives in Japan and ease health care costs very significantly is an important ethical and economic driver that needs to be monetized in this equation.

I see jobs developing in the automotive sector and battery technology sector leveraging off existing industries and infrastructure. I see jobs in more nuclear power plant construction. I see jobs in transmission infrastructure and in distributed power generation associated with wind farms including typhoon hardened offshore farms and solar facilities of all kinds and various scales. I see jobs in developing and installing metered charging stations in parking lots!

Given that energy is such a strategic good for Japan, I see investment in this area being vital for security reasons, but I also see it being very beneficial from an international trade balance of payments perspective and I see it integrating very nicely with existing industrial infrastructure.


2. Greenhouse Management

I always pay more to buy organic food because I believe in ethical purchasing. But the fact is that most people will purchase food that is least expensive. And we cannot feed everyone on this planet with organic produce because we do not have the plant genetics and the land base to do so. If we stopped using chemicals and fertilizers in agriculture, 40% of earth’s population would starve to death. This is how far we have pushed our land and soil beyond its natural or “organic” carrying capacity. But one way we can dramatically increase food production with minimal impact on land and the environment is through intensive greenhouse operation.

A square meter plot of tomatoes will yield 2 kg per year (assuming 1 crop per year). An intensive greenhouse operation has the potential to yield up to 200 kg per year per square meter! The introduction of low cost LED lights combined with vertical farming or multi-level crops in a single space allows greenhouses to be located where the population is; in old, retrofitted buildings in multi-level production floors for example. The lights provide both light and heat. All water is recycled and there is no leakage of chemicals and nutrients into the surrounding environment. Transportation distances to supermarkets are deceased by an order of magnitude. The food is fresh meaning that new genetics can be introduced that focus more on taste and nutrition rather than storage and shipping hardy varieties which are often less tasty and less nutritious.

The co-location with an LED vertical farm (there is that electrical economy emerging again!) with or near a retail outlet offers the potential for seamless integration between production and consumption. A “growing module” that literally rolls out of the greenhouse can be moved, like a shipping container, directly into the retail section and moved back into the production headworks when empty. Not only are their savings in transportation costs but there should be reduced losses due to rot and almost no packaging costs.

I also see these greenhouses being integrated with the fast growing field of Aquaponics or the integration of fish farms with greenhouse operations. The fish produce nitrogen and phosphate wastes which are absorbed by the plants returning clean water to the fish and the reduction or elimination of chemical fertilizers along with the local production of healthy fish thereby reducing pressure on declining marine resources.

So again, as before, more localized production of food addresses food security issues, balance of trade issues as well as being more sustainable in terms of reduced transportation, handling, storage and packaging costs and potentially being much healthier due to product freshness and the potential for new genetics to be expressed that focus on taste and nutrition.

3. Materials Engineers and Policy Planners

Whenever you have a prosperous urban economy, you have a vast amount of materials entering that economy from a global geography and an enormous point source generation of waste materials of all kinds.

I think it is vital to take an industry sectoral look at addressing those waste streams that are creating the most amount of waste either by volume or risk and adopt universal materials standards for that sector of goods. I will use food packaging as an example because it makes up a large portion of urban waste. Standards could be set up, with industrial participation and acceptance that requires that all food packaging must be both biodegradable (in an anaerobic digester to produce methane for example) or easily and safely thermally degradable (in a gasification plant). This adjustment in materials composition would also be coordinated with the necessary urban waste handling infrastructure needed that can receive, sort and process these waste materials in a way that makes the most sense and can produce products like gas, heat and power..

I can see this model eventually being applied not only to every waste stream source but also every product manufactured because almost every good that is produced will some day become waste. Buildings, furniture, appliance, automobiles, electronic goods and industrial plant and equipment will all conform to end-of life manufacturing specifications that provides for the effective (and revenue generating) recycling, re-use or redeployment of those materials.

I also see manufacturing processes themselves changing to better accommodate full cycle product life requirements. I see this technology being globally franchisable and I see the promise of standards and certifications developing that will be adopted by environmentally aware corporations and governments as part of their own marketing/purchasing ethics and to meet the demand pull being created by a growing ethical consumer class and a growing ethical investor class.

4. Geneticists and Genetic Engineers

The field of genetic engineering has enormous promise to program genetic information, like software, into the production of new, healthier and less input demanding plants for the production of food, pharmaceutical products, chemicals and waste residual biomass for energy production.

5. Microbiologists and Soil Scientists

I believe that our reliance on chemical agricultural inputs has destroyed our sense of the real connection that plants have with soil, that being soil physical structures and the intimate association plants and soil have with soil microbes. It is these microbes that are responsible for fixing bioavailable nitrogen in soil, for enhancing the availability of water and nutrients, and for the production of vital organic matter in soil. And we have forgot that most plants actually produce a set of their own phyto-chemicals that attract specific microbes that are beneficial to them through millions of years of associative and codependent evolution. Plants produce chemicals to attract nitrogen fixing bacteria, mycorrhizae and a host of other microbes and higher order plants and animals that are of benefit to them. These extremely valuable plant and soil associations must be better understood to not only sustainably increase plant yields but to also learn how to restore and revive marginal or unproductive lands.

So there you have it. And I didn’t even have to mention global warming once because I believe that all these technologies are not just the right thing to do from an environmental and ethical imperative but also because they are ultimately lower cost options for us from a cold and rational economic perspective as well!