Equipping Gen Z for Green Jobs in Building Operations

Building operations contribute roughly 27 percent of all global carbon emissions, and the problem is growing. By 2060, the world is expected to add 241 billion square meters of floor area to the global building stock, the largest wave of building and infrastructure growth in human history. That’s the equivalent of adding an entire New York City to the world every month for 40 years.

A significant carbon footprint isn’t the only challenge. The building industry is also facing a dire shortage of skilled workers equipped for smart building and digital technologies, which are critical for the industry to cut its carbon emissions.

Recognizing a need to recruit, train, and retain a new generation of skilled workers in the burgeoning green jobs field, the software company Autodesk partnered with the job training nonprofit Stacks and Joules to offer a training program for green building operator careers. In particular, it looks to recruit a diverse group of young people who are often overlooked in the field.

“We continue to hear from our customers that they’re having trouble finding the talent they need across the skilled trades, including building automation and operations,” Kate McElligott, future of work lead at Autodesk, told TriplePundit. “As emerging technologies become mainstream, the gap in digital skills is increasing, and they need to address it.” 

According to a 2024 report from Autodesk, 77 percent of survey respondents in the industry agree that upskilling is important, but only 38 percent say their organizations have the necessary skills and resources for upskilling. 

Too few workers with green skills to meet demand is a global dilemma. A LinkedIn survey of 48 countries found that job postings for green jobs are growing nearly twice as fast as the number of workers with the skills to fill them.

Opening a new career path for Generation Z

Over 70 percent of Gen Z consider potential employers’ environmental policies while searching for jobs, and the building industry is more than ready to welcome this new generation. About one-third of architecture, engineering, construction and operations industry respondents say the next generation is “very influential” in encouraging their companies to become more sustainable.

Matching a generation hungry for meaningful green jobs with an industry eager to recruit them was a perfect opportunity for the Autodesk Foundation’s portfolio of investments, McElligott said. “We wanted a partner doing this work in untraditional ways who was nimble enough to try new approaches and experiment in new ways,” she said.

Stacks and Joules fit the bill. Co-founders Mike Conway and Jon Spooner, an educator and a technologist, tested their hands-on curriculum and training programs in Los Angeles and Boston for years. Today, they have found a niche by addressing the building automation talent pipeline in New York City. Their unique approach focuses on recruiting and training historically underrepresented groups in the tech workforce — mostly women and people of color.  

The nonprofit’s 14-week curriculum equips people with a digital-first mindset and the fundamental knowledge they need to get started in modern building operations. Students gain industry-recognized certification, instruction, and expert mentorship in building optimization and sustainability.

David Sepulveda, now a program associate at Stacks and Joules, is a Gen Z alum of the program. “I did four years of college but I never graduated,” he told TriplePundit. “At that time, I felt really lost. I thought, ‘If I don’t have a college degree, I won’t get a career.’ I was left kind of stranded. Then, my dad sent me the flyer for Stacks and Joules.”

At that time, Sepulveda was an independent contractor working in lighting, and he was interested in computers and coding. He decided to give the program a chance. 

“I appreciated the focus on underrepresented communities because, as a minority myself, I had no idea about building automation or the green economy or all these sustainability jobs,” Sepulveda said. “I learned that this field offers family-supporting wages and careers. And with Stacks and Joules, I get tangible skills to put under my belt while I’m learning. That really drove my motivation to continue.”  

Rethinking workforce development

Unlike many training programs focused on generalist training, the Stacks and Joules program offers specific skills based on market demand. 

“It seemed very effective in placing folks into jobs where they can get started in their careers pretty quickly, shortening the distance between learning and work,” McElligott said. “I loved that students graduate with industry-recognized certifications.”

Graduates of the Stacks and Joules program can also become trainers. “I think that’s really powerful for folks with lived experience to be the ones that are really running the training programs and inspiring the next generation,” she said.

Sepulveda is among those trainers. He found that sharing his experience with college can be helpful for students in the program who feel the same way. “Just by hearing how I went through the college route, and it didn’t work out for me … It adds another level of comfort,” he said.   

The focus on green jobs also inspires students by showing them they can be a part of the solution, McElligott said. “With the intersection with green skills, students learn to conduct energy audits and help building owners and operators reduce those kinds of costs and increase energy efficiency, something we were hearing the market wanted,” she said. 

Sepulveda agreed. “You see a lot of people my age that really care for the environment and want to advocate for change,” he said. “For people who want to make a difference and are also interested in the tech field, this is a great fit. They’re able to have a career but also do something that may align with their morals or their idea of how they can make a positive change in the world.” 

Overcoming barriers for the next-gen green workforce 

For McElligott, the focus on underrepresented communities was a disruptive approach, sitting at the intersection of climate change and inequality. 

“We know the industry could benefit from more diversity, and we were super excited to think about this new infusion of talent to help the industry keep pace with digital transformation,” she said. 

That’s where the support of another program partner, Henry Street Settlement, comes in. The organization is dedicated to providing opportunities and social services to workers from all walks of life with many different cultural backgrounds. Focusing primarily on residents of New York City’s Lower East Side it serves some 50,000 people of all ages. 

It contributes to the Stacks and Joules and Autodesk initiative in a number of ways. Many of the program’s candidates are identified through various Henry Street Settlement programs. It also offers meals, laptops and other materials, and social services to the students.

Crucially, Henry Street Settlement offers its buildings as a living laboratory. With help from Autodesk, students are updating the systems in a building owned by the organization and creating a digital twin to learn how to work with live data. 

The Stacks and Joules approach is working and scalable to other cities and industries, McElligott said. “Stacks and Joules is supporting dozens of folks in multiple cohorts a year.” 

And it circumvented some of the barriers that McElligott noticed other training programs face by being hands-on, practical, highly interactive and empowering students with a career-ready set of skills.

“I think a lot of these place-based training programs can be expensive, white glove and hard to scale,” she said. “For us, results are focused on folks gaining not just a good job but a thriving career.”

The program’s accessibility to students of all backgrounds overcomes a perceived limitation many young people may have if they don’t have a college education, she said.

“In the U.S. at least, we have focused on college as the right path to a great career and the skilled trades have been left behind in some ways,” McElligott said. “What I’m excited about is this emergence of what you could call, ‘green collar jobs’ — tech jobs in the skilled trades. These are good-paying jobs. In this country, we have been structurally funneling folks through college and saying that’s the path to success in our economy. And I think folks are starting to question if that’s true.”

One important barrier left to overcome is a lack of awareness about green jobs and the new green economy, Sepulveda said.

“Stacks and Joules is raising awareness of this industry and these types of family-supporting wages and careers,” he said. “That’s where we fit in and are trying to tackle and approach this issue since one of the main problems in the green economy is the lack of talent.”

Sepulveda said walking in the door of the Stacks and Joules program was life-changing for him, and he knows he is not alone among its other students and graduates. 

“I definitely want to be in the industry,” he said. “I want to be a controls technician. It could be a little ambitious, but I want to be the guy who could do everything. You call me, I’ll service it. I’ll maintain it. I want to be that guy who feels like I could do everything and anything.”