Edinburgh: A Case Study on Green Jobs and Skills Development for People with Low Qualifications

This study focused on people in Edinburgh with low qualifications, meaning those with at most a lower secondary qualification who experience a high risk of poverty and social exclusion, and explored green job opportunities that exist for them, including those that would require reskilling (training to obtain different skills) or upskilling (training to obtain more advanced skills). In this study (unless stated otherwise), green jobs are understood as jobs in businesses that produce goods or provide services that benefit the environment or conserve natural resources, and green skills denote skills needed to adapt products, services and processes to climate change and the related environmental requirements and regulations. Evidence presented here includes national-level data (where regional and local information was not available) and focuses on data specific to green jobs or people with low qualifications. In Edinburgh, the largest potential for green jobs for people with low qualifications exists in construction (and includes occupations such as plasterers, dryliners, glazers, plumbers and heating technicians), in transport (as plant mechanics and fitters) and in manufacturing (as machine and plant operators, and metal and machinery workers). There are only a few interventions aimed at developing green skills for people with low qualifications. Most of these focused on young people. Full details can be found in the main report. [For the main report, "Green Jobs and Skills Development for Disadvantaged Groups. Research Report," see ED624858.]