Supporting the Digital Energy Transition: Your Career
7. A closer look at soft skills
A wide range of technical, transversal and soft skills are needed to drive the digital energy transition. Soft skills, such as communication and persuasion, are becoming more important in profiles across sectors, demonstrating the proliferation of service-oriented activities. Soft skills help to communicate with and educate producers and consumers about the merits of adopting green solutions or practices. Soft skills also contribute to establishing green visions or mindsets among the population, workers or organisations.
In addition, the digitalisation and ‘greening’ of processes also affects work organisation in these types of sectors. Soft skills that facilitate working collaboratively across functions within organisations and with an expanding range of stakeholders are becoming more important. The overarching European Green Deal goal of ensuring a just transition means that acting with empathy and taking a human-centred approach to management and process design are essential.
Look at the following table from Cedefop, which describes the soft and technical skills needed for different sectors in the digital energy transition.
|
|
Technical Skills |
Soft Skills |
|
Waste Management |
ICT/engineering skills related to the adoption of new technologies for processing waste |
Collaboration skills. Persuasion skills to work with organisations to persuade them to reduce waste levels including product design consistent with the circular economy. |
|
Circular Economy |
Skills linked to design and repair (some may be traditional manual ones currently in decline) |
Marketing/communication skills. Persuasion skills (e.g. to support change in consumer behaviour) |
|
Agri-food |
Skills linked to adoption of advanced agricultural production (e.g. precision farming). Skills linked to more sustainable foodstuff production. ICT / data analysis skills. |
Communication and persuasion skills (to engage with producers and the public). |
|
Smart green cities |
ICT and data analysis skills (at the heart of smart, green cities). Awareness of the potential of analysing data generated by sensors (municipal planning). |
Communication and persuasion skills to encourage the general public to make use of the services/functions made possible by smart, green technologies (e.g. e-government). Collaboration skills (to engage with different types of organisations in cities). |
The specific skills required in occupations and sectors, and the extent and level of mastery required, depend on the speed and direction of change brought about by regulation, technology, changing consumer preferences, emerging partnerships between stakeholders and their features, and other trends. In rapidly changing contexts, technical skills facilitating the green transition are symbiotic with soft ones, as the latter amplify the impact of innovation via consumer and citizen engagement. Digital and data analysis skills need to be embedded across the board in ‘green’ curricula and programmes, because the twin transition boosts demand for such skills in all sectors. In some jobs, digital skills will increasingly be considered transversal rather than purely technical.
Activity: Energy production and supply (10 minutes)
Review the table from Cedefop above. Consider the addition of a new row, called Energy production and supply. What technical and/or soft skills would you consider valuable for this category? Where and how might these soft skills in energy production/supply be developed? Should they be taught in schools? At universities or colleges? Training by employers in the sector?
Write down your thoughts. If you are working through the course with others you may like to discuss your responses together.
You can also read more about the digital energy transition and clean technology professions within the European context in this Bruegel article Clean industrial transformation: where does Europe stand? For more on the UK context see Going green and digital: the “twin transition” of regional economies.
