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$content = "<p>Canada needs better education to help fossil fuel workers stay employed as the country aims to decarbonize, says one Canadian think tank.</p>
<p>A report from the CD Howe Institute aims to measure the skills and knowledge of workers in the oil and gas industry and match them with occupations in renewable energy.</p>
<p>A chemical engineer at a fossil fuel plant, for example, would share some skills and knowledge with a nuclear engineer, lead author and policy analyst Lin Al-Akkad said in the report.</p>
<p>Al-Akkad found that while many workers have the skills and knowledge to work in a decarbonized economy, many of them would need to boost technical knowledge, critical thinking and problem-solving skills.</p>
<p><img alt="<who> Photo Credit: Trans Mountain/Facebook" class="img-responsive" src="/files/files/images/481044176_1024739856355582_2568002613861313807_n.jpg" style="margin: 5px;" /></p>
<p>Her findings suggest workers directly in the energy sector would face a harder transition, while workers with manufacturing and supply chain jobs, like a manager responsible for warehousing, will see smoother transitions.</p>
<p>In the report, Al-Akkad calls on the federal government to improve its occupational skills database and create sector-specific training programs to help workers transition to new jobs.</p>
<p>“We have to have these labour skills for Canada to compete in the world,” Al-Akkad said. “It will mean we can export our workers and even bring companies to invest in Canada, especially during this trade war with the United States.”</p>
<p>Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood, who researches Canada’s shift to a zero-carbon economy at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, said the study was a useful first step toward studying how decarbonization will change the labour market.</p>
<p>“It’s a productive place to start,” he said. “But at the end of the day, you still need to ultimately talk to workers and talk to employers and get a sense of how this actually plays out in the real world.”</p>
<h2>Creating a green career map</h2>
<p>To measure the skills gap, Al-Akkad said she had to find a way to quantify and score the skills and knowledge needed to do a wide range of occupations.</p>
<p>“If you have this system where you can map those skills, then you can put those links on a website for workers,” she said. “It can make [switching occupations] a much easier time and save time.”</p>
<p>She relied on the United States’ Occupational Information Network, or O*NET, database and Canada’s Occupational and Skills Information System, or OaSIS database, which both store information and data on the competencies needed to work in approximately 900 occupations.</p>
<p>The O*NET database also includes a library of skills and knowledge needed for each job, like active listening, time management or negotiation.</p>
<p>For each job in the database, a panel of analysts has ranked on a scale from zero to 100 both how important each skill is for each job and what level of each skill is required for each job.</p>
<p>For example, for a judge, active listening has an importance score of 100 and a level score of 84. For a butcher, active listening has an importance score of 53 and a level score of 43.</p>
<p>OaSIS has similar scores for each occupation, ranked on a scale from one to five.</p>
<p>Al-Akkad used both databases to measure skills and knowledge needed for 19 jobs each in the energy, manufacturing and supply chain distribution sectors. In total, she analyzed 57 jobs that she predicted might be affected by the transition to a low-carbon economy.</p>
<p>For each job, Al-Akkad calculated the average of the importance and level scores to get a single measure for every skill and knowledge type.</p>
<p>Then she used that measure to compare the gap in skills between a job in the current economy, like a chemical engineer, and a job needed in a decarbonized economy, like a nuclear engineer.</p>
<p>Al-Akkad found that workers facing the largest skills gaps were highly educated workers in the energy sector, like engineers or geoscientists.</p>
<p>These workers need lots of education in a specific field — and so would require more upskilling to bridge from working at an oil-and-gas-based plant to a similar position at a green energy plant. The study offered the example of a chemical engineer transitioning into a role in a nuclear plant.</p>
<p>According to the study, while chemical engineers often outperform nuclear engineers in programming by 20 per cent, the new profession would require a 14.9 per cent improvement in repairing skills and 13.2 per cent more writing skills.</p>
<p>She found that roles requiring high school diplomas or post-secondary certificates have a much smaller skills gap, meaning it would be easier to transition to greener jobs.</p>
<p>Petroleum pump system operators, for example, have a relatively small skills gap with biomass plant technicians.</p>
<p>Al-Akkad noted Canada’s OaSIS database is not as robust as the United States’ O*NET database and is not updated as frequently. She said improving Canada’s occupational databases could help create clearer pathways for workers looking to work in a greener field.</p>
<h2>‘We want to be keeping pace’</h2>
<p>But Mertins-Kirkwood is skeptical that the government databases paint the whole picture — or capture the nuanced skills and knowledge that each individual brings to a job.</p>
<p>“Almost certainly, they oversimplify the real world or kind of make it seem more clear-cut than it really is,” he said. “If we get too bogged down in these econometric analyses or highly modelled comparisons, we’re overlooking how personal it is.”</p>
<p>Mertins-Kirkwood added that the number of workers who are going to be most affected by the transition is likely very small, in the thousands. Still, he said Al-Akkad’s report helps map out how workers and educators can work in lower-carbon careers.</p>
<p>“We will need so many workers to pull off net zero — way more workers than we’ve got — and most of those workers are going to be new workers,” he said. “But we owe it to the workers [already in the workforce] to make sure that they’re not left behind.”</p>
<p>Mertins-Kirkwood said Al-Akkad’s recommendation to boost pathways and training programs for workers would be a necessary part of decarbonization.</p>
<p>Luisa Da Silva is executive director of Iron & Earth, a non-profit that helps fossil fuel workers and Indigenous communities access renewable energy.</p>
<p>“Those are very solid recommendations, and it reflects a lot of the work that we do,” she said.</p>
<p>According to Da Silva, much of the organization’s work includes training people how to install and maintain solar panels and wind turbines in their communities. From 2021 to date, the organization has trained more than 230 individuals in solar and wind installations.</p>
<p>She said that in practice, many people in the communities Iron & Earth works with already possess the skills needed to help install and operate renewable energy infrastructure — they just need some hands-on experience.</p>
<p>“They’re not going to be coming out as Red Seal skilled, but they are going to gain enough information that they could work as technicians,” Da Silva said.</p>
<p>Iron & Earth used the same occupational databases to build a tool called the Climate Career Portal to help workers find green jobs that match their existing skills.</p>
<p>Da Silva urged policymakers to ensure Canadian workers can access the skills and training they need to find jobs in renewable energy.</p>
<p>“Other countries are already moving ahead at light speed in comparison to Canada,” Da Silva said. “We want to be keeping pace, and we want to be ensuring that as a country, we’re not going to be getting left behind. Our economy depends on it.”<br />
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