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Boots on the ground, people rolling up sleeves and getting hands dirty retrofitting existing infrastructure, such as poorly insulated houses, type stuff. The goal is to re-make our built environment to be energy efficient and drive down carbon emissions ASAP. So we really need lots and lots more skilled tradespeople \u2014 fast. Aka, the kind of multifaceted, hands-on skills that technologists haven\u2019t figured out how to automate yet.<\/p>\n Fixing this problem absolutely, therefore, demands human beings. Lots and lots of people to come in, eager and willing to learn new stuff, and take up green retrofitting jobs. So it\u2019s a job discovery problem. And a training\/upskilling\/reskilling problem. Which means digital technology can of course help. And this is where a U.K. edtech startup founded last year, called greenworkx<\/a>, is angling to step in \u2014 with a new spot of supportive construction: A digital pathway designed to boost the flow of skilled workers into green jobs.<\/p>\n The London-based team, which has just closed a \u00a3600k pre-seed funding round, describes what\u2019s it\u2019s building as \u201cthe go-to talent portal for green jobs\u201d. The app soft launched towards the start of the year, after the co-founders formally incorporated the startup in mid June last year. The early stage funding round was led by Mangrove Capital Partners, with participation from Ada Ventures, and a number of angel investors in the climate and edtech sectors, including the CEOs of Multiverse (Euan Blair), MyTutor (Bertie Hubbard) and Octopus Electric Vehicles (Fiona Howarth).<\/p>\n Commenting in a statement, Nikolas Krawinkel, partner at Mangrove, heralded the opportunity of the looming \u201cgreen industrial revolution\u201d, writing: \u201cWe\u2019re on the cusp of a green industrial revolution, which will require a huge rethink of our education and training systems. The greenworkx team have a deep understanding of digital-first learning methodologies and we\u2019re excited to work with them to take on this profoundly important challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe urgent ramp-up needed in the green workforce is a unique opportunity to build a fairer, more equitable future by bringing millions into a rapidly-growing sector of huge social and environmental importance,\u201d added Matt Penneycard, founding partner at Ada Ventures, in another supporting statement. \u201cWe\u2019re incredibly excited about the double impact that greenworkx can have in empowering people to access well-paid, future-ready jobs, whilst simultaneously directly driving the net-zero revolution to address the climate crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n The startup\u2019s vision is to build a platform and digital tools to drive awareness and accelerate the uptake of green jobs, using techniques like bite-sized learning and algorithmic matching of jobseekers to connect them with relevant opportunities to help build and power up the green economy.<\/p>\n Co-founders Mat Ilic and Richard Ng bring backgrounds in public policy work and education and edtech to bear on this skills funnel challenge.<\/p>\n Ilic, the policy guy, says he was inspired to tackle the people side and the green jobs challenge as he was reading John Doerr\u2019s book, Speed and Scale \u2014 <\/em>which is literally subtitled an \u201caction plan for solving our climate crisis now\u201d. \u201cIt was the first time that net zero felt like a manageable problem,\u201d he tells TechCrunch, saying the book helped him realize \u201chow significant people are\u201d \u2014 especially \u201cthe people we need to bring about the transition, not just people to make lifestyle changes\u201d \u2014 and so the \u201cloose idea was was born then and there\u201d.<\/p>\n Ng, who started his career as a maths teacher before moving into edtech and, latterly, training software engineers at U.K. tech apprenticeship startup Multiverse<\/a>, says he\u2019d felt pretty settled in that career \u2014 until he got speaking to Ilic and also got the green jobs itch.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was explaining to me this problem that in order to reach Net Zero we need to deploy all this green infrastructure\u2026 and I remember being really shocked by this because I thought wow, this is obviously a huge problem, which is really high stakes, really time urgent, and yet when I think about skills and future work so often it\u2019s purely about \u2018oh we need to code\u2019,\u201d he says in a video call with TechCrunch, offering a tacit critique of the full-throttle focus on \u2018learn to code\u2019 of the past (many) years. (Code, after all, may well end up being automated by powerful technologies like generative AI \u2014 even as we\u2019re still in desperate need of double glazers, plumbers, electricians etc etc.)<\/p>\n There are also of course plenty of people for whom learning to code is never going to be the right fit. And Ng says he realized there\u2019s an unfolding opportunity for all sorts of workers to thrive in green jobs as demand for these more hands-on, people-facing skills keeps growing \u2014 as well as being excited by the chance to build out the kind of support for vocational training and learning that the U.K.\u2019s traditional educational system has not been geared toward.<\/p>\n \u201cWe need people to work with data, that\u2019s very necessary, and there\u2019s a bunch of people working on that now. But I was like this is also super, super important and really, really underserved,\u201d he says. \u201cCoding, unfortunately, is phenomenally inaccessible for a bunch of people\u2026 <\/span>[Whereas] these jobs\u2026 are really, really meaningful, they\u2019re pretty well paid and they\u2019re actually very accessible as well. <\/span>And so, for me, it was also about making sure that as we think about this really important challenge Net Zero we\u2019re also using that as an opportunity to make sure we have this bright future of work which is hopefully much more inclusive and accessible to the communities which I care a lot about.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The scale of the retrofit challenge means the skills supply problem is vast indeed. Ilic cites a statistic suggesting at least 30 million roles will be needed globally by the end of the decade \u2014 and half a million in the U.K. alone, just for domestic energy retrofitting. (And the startup\u2019s stated mission is to get 10 million people into green jobs over 10 years.)<\/p>\n While the challenge is global the U.K. certainly has some of the worst insulated homes in Europe, making that element a particularly acute local problem. Solutions can also be interdependent, too \u2014 since, for example, poorly insulated homes aren\u2019t a good fit for low carbon heat pumps \u2014 which means tackling drafty buildings is really a prerequisite for speeding up the decarbonization of U.K. housing stock.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re talking about half a million different professions and trades needed in already an existing skills shortage in construction \u2014 and that\u2019s before we start talking about the other aspect of this, which is the existing workers who need to be reskilled in what\u2019s basically the biggest reallocation of capital and the means of production since the Industrial Revolution,\u201d says Ilic, adding: \u201cAnd no one seems to be talking about it with the level of urgency and emergency and scale that is needed \u2014 and more fundamentally, we\u2019re here because we believe it\u2019s eminently solvable. And that\u2019s what\u2019s so practical about the way that we\u2019re looking at this challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n Some other startups are talking about it, of course. Denmark-based Lun<\/a>, for example, recently bagged seed funding to build software tools to encourage more tradespeople to focus on installing heat pumps, instead of taking on less climate friendly jobs. While US-based BlocPower<\/a> has already been beavering away for almost a decade with a residential retrofit-as-service platform focused on low-income communities. But it\u2019s fair to say the scale of the change needed across our societies is so absolute \u2014 so root and branch \u2014 that it\u2019ll need a tsunami of startups tackling as many bits and pieces as possible if we\u2019re to drive the necessary system flip at the blistering pace now required to avoid even worse heating and weather extremes (not to mention the risk of runaway climate change).<\/p>\n Greenworkx\u2019s app is soft launched at this stage \u2014 with a handful (around 40) of green skills seekers signed up to a (free) introductory retrofit course they\u2019re offering.<\/p>\n Early users are more of a mix than the team\u2019s expected target youth demographic (i.e. 16-24-year-old school and college leavers who did not follow the academic higher education route to university) \u2014 with Ng noting other profiles of interest include immigrants in their mid thirties to forties seeking a career switch into more stable work. Another early user he mentions was a former nurse \u2014 a women in her late fifties who could no longer continue working in a patient-facing role (owing to developing allergies) but who was looking for another job that allows her to keep serving her community and retrofitting social housing fit the bill for her. (\u201cIt\u2019s a way to basically continue serving her community.\u201d)<\/p>\n To locate their first users they\u2019ve been partnering with organizations and charities that are focused on employability. But as they seek to scale up they plan to expand the pool of jobseekers via digital marketing on social media and tapping up the sorts of influencers who might resonant with key targets. They\u2019re also planning a possible green jobs travelling roadshow to take their message of climate opportunity around the country in an electric bus.<\/p>\n The early product is still quite a manual experience, per the co-founders, as the team has been focused on understanding learner profiles and needs so they can better tailor the platform experience. But the goal is, ultimately, to automate the process of matching jobseekers to green skills opportunities to be able to scale the platform and its outputs.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve had our first proactive inbound from a small company this week looking for energy assessors and retrofit assessors,\u201d notes Ilic. \u201cSo it\u2019s been really interesting to see that. And in terms of where we focus attention on the job side, so really a lot of investment is going into decarbonizing social housing at the moment \u2014 housing associations, local authorities and smaller energy efficiency or construction companies are all looking for these sort of energy efficiency professionals or trades. So some of that is them reaching out to us some of it is us working with them. So we\u2019re pretty confident that for this kind of batch of people that we\u2019re taking through \u2014 both the understanding retrofit courses as well as some partnerships that are more focused on domestic energy assessment or retrofit advice \u2014 we should be able to get our first job outcomes and then explore how it goes from there.\u201d<\/p>\n For larger energy companies and construction firms the first focus is likely to be on upskilling an existing workforce, rather than trying to hire scores of new workers. So the startup is thinking how it might best support those goals. They\u2019re also still figuring out how much training content they might offer themselves \u2014 vs working with partners and\/or employers to provide it. But the overarching goal is to find ways to support as many people as possible to think about a career switch, skills upgrade or first leap into green jobs.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re a b2b proposition. And the ultimate goal is to create value by giving people the talent they couldn\u2019t otherwise reach \u2014 so filling roles,\u201d says Ilic. \u201cBut I think we\u2019re exploring a range of different steps in between, including actually having that curriculum and training proposition to support reskilling existing workers, because if we\u2019re building a high quality digital curriculum for connecting people to these jobs from a standing start, actually it\u2019s also relevant for people that are learning about low carbon heating technologies in their current jobs. So both reskilling and recruitment are going to be part of our value proposition.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe are starting supply side. We want to build a tool that will matter so much to learners that they will obsess about,\u201d he adds. \u201cThey would be prepared to pay for it even though we\u2019d never want to charge them for it because we want to create a frictionless route for them to be able to access these roles. Because that\u2019s partly in our collective interest \u2014 as I said, we\u2019re looking at servicing the labour demand \u2014 but, yeah, we feel that the business side will become kind of apparent as things unfold; as you see the kind of exponential growth, say the consumer demand for solar among other things, so that\u2019s what we\u2019re planning.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nUK\u2019s greenworkx takes aim at the domestic retrofit skills challenge<\/br>
\n2023-04-03 22:13:25<\/br><\/p>\n