New occupations for the new era

For better environment

Many other new occupations have emerged which can support China's high-quality sustainable development of production and better protect the environment.

For example, new professions that will help the county achieve the carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals such as carbon emission administrators, carbon sequestration assessors, and energy efficiency and carbon-neutral building consultants are among the latest officially recognized occupations.

Ren Feng, director of the carbon asset management department at Ruichentai New Energy Company's branch in Chengdu, Sichuan province, said that since China published a plan in 2021 to ensure its carbon emissions peak before 2030 and it realizes carbon neutrality before 2060, the demand for carbon emission administrators has increased rapidly because many enterprises have to reduce their carbon emissions, such as power plants and steel manufacturers.

"By recognizing the new occupations, the authorities can formulate new vocational standards and guide training institutions to carry out training in accordance with the standards, so the assessment of carbon emissions and carbon sequestration can be more accurate, which is key to carbon trading," Ren said.

"Many enterprises have already created new departments to monitor carbon emissions and such specialists are in shortage."

Also, the inclusion of green occupations, mainly in such fields as ecological environment monitoring, environmental protection and governance, new energy production, and waste recovery and utilization, in the official list, will help more people, especially youths, to learn about the new occupations and possibly become interested in them, Ren added.

Hu Yujie, 32, is an associate professor at Guizhou University in Guiyang, Guizhou province.

She also works as a carbon sequestration assessor and uses carbon measurement methodologies to measure, audit and evaluate carbon sinks in forests, grasslands and other ecosystems.

"I once worked on a project that aimed to replace electricity with shallow geothermal energy for some daily household needs, in a bid to reduce carbon emissions due to the use of fossil fuel-generated electricity," Hu told Xinhua News Agency, and added that an "emissions reduction project like this can be put on the carbon trading market to share the cost of emissions reduction".