# **1. Motivation**

The greening of the economy, like other mega-trends, is changing the world of work. Identifying the occupations that will be in demand in the green economy—often simply referred to as green jobs or green occupations—and the skills they require is paramount to supporting and enabling an environmentally sustainable planet while contributing to economic development. New industries that produce environmentally friendly goods and services for intermediate or final consumption are emerging. Moreover, the greening of the economy requires highly polluting industries not necessarily to disappear, but to transform by implementing different technologies to become more sustainable. This economic transformation is impacting occupations to varying degrees, and it becomes critical to identify which ones are changing and what skills they require to make the green transformation possible.

Despite the importance of having a common definition of green jobs to be used by researchers and policy makers, there is currently no consensus on a single concept yet, let alone how to identify them in practice. On the one hand, there is agreement that green jobs aim to reduce environmental impact by both producing environmentally friendly outputs and promoting environmentally friendly production processes. On the other hand, the scope of what green jobs should encompass varies. For some, a definition of green jobs should include all jobs that are somehow associated with the greening of the economy, regardless of whether the job itself contributes to reducing the impact on the environment. Supporters of this view include all environmentally neutral jobs, that is, jobs that do not harm the environment even if they do not help to preserve it. Others include what is usually referred to as "greening jobs" or jobs for a greener economy or indirect green jobs. These are jobs that do not directly contribute to preserving the environment but might be in-demand as part of the green transformation. Lastly, some institutions like the ILO add the "decent job" layer to the definition: a green job not only needs not to damage the environment, but it also needs to pay adequate wages and provide worker protection.

The lack of convergence stems from the unfeasibility of translating the concepts into a single measurement methodology that suits existing data (or cost-effective, collectible new data) and different policy questions. Many policy makers prioritize supporting workers moving out from brown jobs to other green jobs. Researchers instead have a broader set of questions, for which they use different definitions and deploy very different specialized surveys. These surveys are usually a good tool for specific questions at hand, but generalizing their use to other policy questions creates important biases.

As a single definition may not be possible—or even desirable—in view of the multiple policy questions, this paper seeks to identify which occupations and skills should be the focus of skills development policies needed to support the greening of the economy. Put simply, it aims to identify which occupations may require new skills training to support the green economy. With this objective in mind, this paper shows that green jobs should be understood as those that have specific tasks assigned to lessen consumers' and/or firms' environmental impact. These green tasks can either be assigned with the goal of producing greener outputs or of reducing the firm's environmental footprint. The proposed methodological approach helps to identify the skills that will be needed to carry out such tasks. Some of these jobs will require core skills, some of which will be transversal, while others would be specific 2