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Education & employment

A nation both educated and informed

The historic challenge of the energy and climate transition calls for a nation that is both informed about the issues and trained to address them.

How many jobs will be needed in each sector? How can we adapt our skills and reallocate our human resources to meet these new demands? How can we train students and workers in light of these challenges?

Through its work on employment, training, and education, the Shift seeks to provide answers.

Our latest publications

Sector's Key Figures

  • 90 %

    of the positions to be filled by 2030 in the key sectors of ecological planning are for technicians and manual workers (SGPE).

  • 37 %

    This is the share of organizations that have offered job-related training linked to the ecological transition in the past two years.

  • 11 %

    Only a few training programs in 2019 made climate-energy issues a mandatory part of higher education.

Continuing education: training the workforce for the ecological transition

Without continuing education, there can be no ecological transition. Continuing education is essential to train the 30 million working people. It often responds more quickly than initial training to urgent skill needs, supports the development of competencies and career changes, thus aiding the transformation of organizations and minimizing the risk of job losses. Continuing education stakeholders therefore have a key role to play in the transition. Our work provides an overview of their engagement, identifies the skills without which the ecological transition cannot materialize, and outlines a direction to strive toward.

Read our latest report

Our work on higher education

Finance education

The ecological transition requires massive funding. According to France Stratégie, around €100 billion per year will need to be invested in France by 2030 to address the climate emergency. Yet only 5% of finance programs include ecological issues. The conclusion is clear: finance professionals have a major role to play, but they are not being trained. At the master’s level, a minimum of 320 hours of coursework is needed for finance professionals to understand physical constraints and their implications for their professions.

In the following report, « ClimatSup Finance – Former pour une finance au service de la transition », The Shift Project offers concrete avenues for integrating ecological issues into finance training, thanks to the involvement of over 150 professionals from higher education, management, and finance.

Management education

The « ClimatSup Business – Former les acteurs de l’économie de demain » report, aims to transform core curricula, but also to tailor the necessary knowledge and skills by professional track, in order to train managers capable of implementing the ecological transition.

The report resulting from this work proposes an operational method for integrating ecological issues into management education, developed in partnership with Audencia Business School and several other institutions.

Engineering education

The publication « ClimatSup INSA – Former l’ingénieur du XXIe siècle »

Aims to provide a method for better integrating ecological issues into engineering programs, based on a case study of the INSA Group.

The 21st-century engineer appears as a key player in the ecological and energy transition. Whether in a decision-making or technical role, they must factor into their decisions the depletion of available resources—especially energy—biodiversity loss, climate change, and other physical challenges, along with their societal consequences. Yet, engineers remain insufficiently trained on these issues.

Mobilizing higher education for the climate

This report presents an overview of how climate change-related topics were addressed in French higher education in 2019. It highlights a significant gap (only 11% of the programs analyzed included climate-energy issues in the core curriculum), and offers avenues for ensuring these topics become widespread in education. The report resonated strongly within the academic community and civil society, leading to several follow-ups, including the following call to action  « Pour former tous les étudiants aux enjeux climatiques et écologiques » signed by more than 150 institutional leaders, and participation in the working group on ecological transition education in higher education, initiated by the Ministry of Higher Education, in the  Jouzel Abbadie.  report.

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