Decarbonising the UK economy has the potential to deliver a net employment increase of up to 725,000 jobs, but more direct government intervention is needed to grasp this opportunity and reskill workers in carbon-intensive sectors to tackle a looming green skills crunch.

That is the conclusion of a new study today from the Climate Change Committee (CCC), which argues that most of the UK workforce is unlikely to be significantly impacted by the transition to a net zero emissions economy over the next three decades.

The report predicts the pursuit of the UK’s statutory 2050 net zero emissions target is likely to create hundreds of thousands of new jobs across the breadth of the UK economy. But it also highlights how green jobs are likely to be concentrated in industries such as construction, green home retrofitting, renewable energy, and electric vehicle (EV) battery manufacturing.