The green economy is remaking the heart of Corporate America

At first glance, Alex Giarratano ’s daily routine looks indistinguishable from his peers in investment banking.?

On a typical Tuesday, he’ll head into the office at around 10 a.m., following a long night assembling financial models for a client. His employer, Marathon Capital, requires workers to be in the office four days a week — a common mandate at financial giants these days.?

After catching up on email and attending meetings with senior bankers, he will turn his attention to his core task: advising clients on which assets they should invest in.?

But this is where his work diverges from his investment banking colleagues. Giarratano focuses entirely on investments in sustainability and renewable energy.?

His sustainability work spans a wide range, from advising corporate giants like Nestle on tax incentives associated with sustainable investments to helping a startup launch a network of hydrogen fueling stations.?

All of his assignments — and the fact that his role exists in the first place — reflect one key fact. Sustainability, once a niche in the professional world, has become big business, and it is finding a foothold in every industry and job function.?

This shift is transforming the inner core of Corporate America: consulting, accounting and other professional service roles, along with the MBA programs that produce a substantial share of these workers every year.?

Tax breaks made available from the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, coupled with new government regulations and reporting requirements, has generated growing demand for professionals like Giarratano who have a passion for sustainability and the business know-how to help clients prepare for climate risks.

Between 2016 and the present, workers with environmental accounting, finance or procurement skills grew by an average of 4% each year in the U.S., according to an analysis by LinkedIn’s Economic Graph Research and Insights team. By comparison, those with traditional sustainability and climate-related skills grew by 0.55% during that same period.?

And hiring for workers with environmental auditing, finance and procurement expertise outpaced overall hiring in the US by 62% in July 2023, the analysis found.

The professional services industry also employed the largest share of these workers (24%) in that time period, according to LinkedIn data. The manufacturing and construction sectors have also focused on luring these professionals, employing 16% and 13% of such workers during the same period.?

Giarratano’s career path reflects this shift. The New York native intended to follow in the family footsteps in the energy industry. His grandfather started out as a lineman, climbing up transmission lines in the middle of hurricanes, and his dad worked as an engineer at a nuclear power plant. And 34-year-old Giarratano earned a Bachelor’s and Masters in electrical engineering before making his way to Austin, Texas to take an engineering role at utility company Ercot.

“I was fascinated by the energy industry and thought electricity markets were cutting edge,” he said. “I wanted to take my own route and do what I thought was the most interesting but in the same industry because that’s what I had been around.”

Seeing the money flowing through the Texas energy sector piqued his interest, and he made his way to business school to focus on the financial side of sustainability work.

Sustainability heads to B-school

MBA programs are taking note of the rapid rise in demand for sustainability-focused business skills, from employers and students alike. Giarratano’s alma mater, The McCombs School at the University of Texas at Austin, has sought to set itself apart in how it caters to students looking to gain climate-related accounting and finance chops.

For a decade, McCombs accounting professor Jeffrey Hales has incorporated climate-related concepts into his courses. But what used to be a niche corporate topic is now mainstream, he said, particularly as companies introduce roles like sustainability controller to their rosters and look to procurement staff to conduct due diligence on their supplier’s emissions.

Regulations proposed in March 2022 by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will require public companies to report not just their own carbon footprint but that of their suppliers as well, transforming previously optional sustainability reports into legally bound disclosures .

For now, McComb’s in-depth sustainability courses are primarily electives, but these topics are making their way into the school’s core curriculum.

“I did see it start to creep into the curriculum,” said Alexis Greco , who graduated from McCombs earlier this year. “I wrote a case study on the wine industry in California, and you can’t talk about that without talking about the insurance risk and what’s happening with wildfires.”

Employers that regularly recruit from MBA programs — consulting companies, in particular — are increasingly seeking candidates who can educate firm clients on climate risk and sustainability reporting requirements, according to Hales. And McCombs is “developing a different curriculum to help with this.”

Other schools, like Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, have embraced the shift to sustainability skills for some time. Since 2010, the school has offered an energy finance concentration to its MBA students. And in 2016, they launched a partnership with other business schools to produce an annual climate conference for students.

“We’re seeing a lot of broader interest from MBAs who understand that even if they’re not planning on pursuing sustainability as a career … they are going to have to be well versed in topics like ESG investing, supply chains, climate risk and climate tech investments,” said Katie Kross , managing director at Fuqua’s Center for Energy, Development and the Global Environment.

Giarratano says MBA students who are looking to land a sustainability job need not shift their course loads too dramatically. He recommends aspiring sustainability professionals double down on the B-school basics to make sure they feel comfortable with core business skills and spend the remaining time incorporating sustainability topics into their course load.

Corporate America catches on

Corporate America is not waiting around for a new crop of graduates so they can get up to speed on sustainability. They are taking matters into their own hands and training employees themselves.?

Last year, Deloitte launched an optional global climate training program that, while not mandatory, is highly encouraged. So far, the push seems to be working: Over 300,000 Deloitte employees have enrolled, said Nathan Sloan , Deloitte’s head of talent for sustainability, climate and equity.

Deloitte’s climate program is drawing interest as a growing share of the firm’s clients make their own sustainability commitments, as new SEC regulations take effect and as Deloitte itself moves forward with its net-zero promises.?

Because of these commitments and requirements, everyone from the entry-level finance professional all the way up to the chief financial officer now needs to have a basic understanding of climate risk.

“They want to make sure that when they speak publicly, especially to investors, they have comfort in the quality of the information,” said Hales, the McCombs professor.

This shift has created substantial business opportunities for Deloitte and its consulting competitors. Deloitte itself invested $1 billion in its sustainability and climate practice, as it seeks to train and prepare clients for this new landscape.

Atlanta-based conglomerate Cox Enterprises is one of several major firms that have turned to external consultants to develop a sustainability training program for its internal auditors. Even though Cox is privately held, the approaching SEC regulations have created a new reporting landscape, said Lindsay Wilkinson , Cox’s senior director of ESG reporting.

Wilkinson, herself an MBA graduate, had initially asked the company’s auditing team to ensure their climate disclosures were accurate, but the team of finance professionals hadn’t worked on things like carbon accounting before.?

Rather than bring in a consultant every year to train new employees, Wilkinson hired them to put together training materials that she and her colleagues could use on their own to help both new employees and those who need a refresher.

Giarranto, meanwhile, is doing his own training, helping Marathon Capital clients understand what the new SEC regulations will require and what data these firms will need to collect.?

“We’ve had a ton of inbounds recently on regulations and how they might affect different types of investments,” he said. “It’s us, consultants and investment banks really trying to shepherd investors through the different types of outcomes.”

Looking to get ahead or catch up on sustainability skills and topics? Here’s some resources to help you get started:

• LinkedIn Learning: Two courses are available for free through Sept. 29. The first — Improve Your Sustainability Skills — focuses on more traditional sustainability roles and the skills you’ll need. The second — Sustainability Transformation for Leaders — is for those looking to make their businesses more sustainable.
• MIT has a program with EdX, teaching users the ins and outs of new energy technologies .
• Want to learn more about the science behind climate change ? The University of Chicago has a course on it.
• The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has a class on environmental law and the policies underpinning it.
• For a glimpse at how other industries are incorporating sustainability workers, check out LinkedIn’s Green Skills Report .