If Canada is to achieve its greenhouse gas mitigation targets by 2050, significant increases in trained professionals will be required, says a report released by Carbon Management Canada (CMC),.
The labor demand forecast, commissioned by CMC and conducted by Navius Research Inc., suggests that if Canada wants to stay on track toward achieving its long term emissions reduction target of 60-70% from 2006 levels by 2050, university, college and technical graduates will be needed to fill as many as 27,000 full-time equivalent positions in 2030. If Canada aims to achieve just half of this level of abatement, additional skilled labor demand (over and above business as usual scenarios) could be as high as 12,000 full-time equivalent positions in 2030. These are many of the same skill sets already in high demand.
“Our demand forecast says that we could need many more highly qualified and highly skilled people in just 17 years,” says Richard Adamson, CMC managing director. “That’s engineers, geologists, geoscientists, technicians and technologists. That would be a big challenge under the best of circumstances, but the bigger challenge is that many of the skill sets required to achieve that are the same skill sets that the industry is already short of under its present business as usual projections.”
For a summary of the report, click here.
To read the full report, click here.