Environmental education for NetZero

To achieve #NetZero 2050, the building blocks of Social Transformation need to be in place now, and one of the main pillars of those building blocks is environmental education.

Carbon emissions should be something that becomes paramount in our daily routines if we really want to provoke a mind-set change.

Part of many government’s remit for the next 30 years is a reduction of Carbon emissions, as agreed in 2015 at COP21 in Paris.

The Paris agreement is a legally binding international treaty on climate change adopted by 196 parties in 2015. All countries participating need to achieve Zero Carbon by 2050.

Implementation of the Paris Agreement requires significant economic, political and social transformation.

This is not something that can be achieved in a couple of years. Our culture, politics, economy, the way we think and live, needs to be transformed in a way where carbon emissions are part of our DNA.

Environmental Education by its definition will allow us all to engage with problem solving and take action to improve the environment as individuals.

If our 2030/2050 goals include a reduction of carbon emissions as a Nation, I firmly believe a vital step we are currently missing is to educate us all, as individuals, on what we can do to achieve that

Organisations are starting to wake up to what is needed in the years ahead to achieve net zero by 2050. 

What does that mean in the future labour market?

It means that more and more, companies are going to need Green Managers, Environmental Managers and a culture of environmental sustainability.

The labour market needs people with the skills to measure, monitor and reduce carbon emissions in the workplace. Sue Duke, Head of Global Policy and Economic Graph at LinkedIn says that people who have green skills are recruited 1.5 times faster that those who don’t. 

By embedding environmental sustainability skill sets into our schools and colleges, we will prepare our youth for the jobs the marketplace will need now and in the future.

How can Fifty Shades Greener (FSG) help?

Our online educational programmes range from Secondary Schools to third level education, with accredited and non-accredited option. We teache students how to measure, manage and reduce carbon emissions and realise cost savings by reducing energy, waste and water from any building, their homes or their workplaces.

We are currently working with thousands of learners in Ireland and this some of the feedback we have had on the programmme:

• Students rated the programme 9 out of 10 in terms of how confident they felt in the content they had learned.
• They were 100% confident that they could take their learning from this programme and apply it to other buildings. 
• More than two thirds of the pilot group felt that they had made lifestyle choices to become more sustainable.

We are passionate about providing learners with the skills they need to make this transformation happen and truly believe that education is key to a sustainable way of life. 

If you think we could work with you and your learners then please contact me, Raquel, at [email protected] .