New careers emerge from going green

An intensifying focus on the environment by employers across Canada is creating new career and business opportunities.

Some industries, such as accounting, are seeing the positive impact on their business of tighter environmental measuring, monitoring and reporting regulations. Additionally, companies are creating dedicated positions to oversee firms' environmental targets and strategies.

Workers in the traditional environmental sector are also watching their range of services, and the employees who deliver them, evolve with the times.

In the financial services sector, some companies are seeing benefits to their bottom lines by reducing paper usage, for instance, while they also see an emerging area of business to help their clients become greener.

"As an industry, everyone is looking for what those market opportunities are right now," says Mario Paron, chief human resources officer for KPMG LLP in Canada.

He says the firm has to walk the talk if it wants to have credibility with clients. "Every client will automatically ask you to tell them how you've implemented this or what you're doing in this area."

KPMG's employees eagerly share with those clients how they've integrated an environmental strategy into their operations.

As one of this year's greenest employers in Canada, as ranked by Mediacorp, KPMG stands out for launching initiatives such as reducing the amount of paper used in the office, funding environmental groups and moving into a new gold-level certified green building this fall in Toronto under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards.

"Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is becoming increasingly important to business," says Tania Carnegie, national leader of corporate citizenship for KPMG, which launched a broad environmental performance initiative in 2007.

Being a green employer also gives the firm a competitive advantage in recruiting younger employees.

"When (young recruits) are assessing their choices as to what type of organization they want to be associated with, the entire (CSR) and green aspects are definitely things they ask us about," says Paron.

"You have to put your money where your mouth is," adds Carnegie.

Many other sectors are becoming aware of the advantages of green initiatives. Intrawest ULC at Whistler Blackcomb created "environment co-ordinators." They are dedicated to helping the company reach its goal of having a carbon-neutral footprint by 2010 through such initiatives as building a $32-million hydroelectric plant inside its ski hill area that will produce surplus electricity to sell back into the grid.

New Flyer Industries Canada ULC also created an environmental co-ordinator to ensure it meets its own environmental targets, while companies in the traditional energy business are also contributing to the development of new green jobs.

Enmax Corp. in Calgary created Alberta's largest wind energy farm with 32 turbines, and the firm's chief executive turned his own home into a small cogeneration plant that sells electricity back into the grid.

Architects are increasingly adding a green dimension to their skills, too, as firms such as Busby Perkins+Will Architects Inc. and HOK Canada get more of their staff LEED-accredited. Both firms have more than 750 certified staff worldwide as part of their parent companies, or as much as 60 per cent of their workforces.

Governments are also contributing to the rise of green jobs. Alberta, for example, has committed $2 billion to carbon capture and sequestration technology for the oilpatch, while the federal government has committed $3.4 billion to clean up federally owned sites through the Federal Contaminated Sites Action Plan.

Meanwhile, the traditional environmental sector, which includes a range of environmental scientists, engineers and technologists, is also going beyond its historical focus on remediation of old, contaminated sites to ensuring new sites are built to be environmentally friendlier.

"I would say (the field) is definitely broadening," says Judith Glazier, a senior hydro-geologist with AMEC in Calgary. "There's definitely been a shift toward brand new sites, things like the oilsands, which is keeping a lot of us busy," she says. "The scope of work is more varied than it ever has been before ... ."

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