How do we solve climate change? Too much pressure is put on individuals and how we consume, politics is often inefficient and slow, and most people don’t have the luxury of time and money to spend on volunteering, charity, and activism. Although change through consumer action, politics, volunteering, charity, and activism is important, the way of taking climate action we believe is the most impactful one is through professional work, something we want to educate about. There are endless solutions to the climate crisis, and the private sector is the most efficient route to develop them, leaders in the private sector are taking bold actions to develop solutions to solve the climate crisis and build a sustainable future. We need to shift our focus to this, and most importantly, help these leaders develop these solutions by offering them our talent, skills, and experience.
We conducted a survey that asked hundreds of people if they’d consider working with professional climate action and sustainability. Turns out, most people (87% of survey respondents) would consider switching to a job that has a positive impact on the environment, but doesn’t know where to find such opportunities, which there are plenty of. Therefore, we decided to create earthforce with the purpose of spreading knowledge about climate work, and the companies that offer these job opportunities.
First of all, what does professional climate action and sustainability work mean? It means that you apply your skills in a suitable role at a company with a mission that positively impacts the environment, basically earning a salary for doing what you’re best at, while also saving our planet. Sounds pretty awesome, right? If you want a more thorough and detailed definition, read more about it in this article.
The question is, however, how and where to find these opportunities - and that’s what we are here for.
To get a good understanding of what environmental problems we actually have, we want to hash out what contributes to greenhouse gas emissions. Then break down each piece of the pie, and highlight some companies in Sweden that work on reducing emission in each respective area for you can get an idea of how your talent could be put to environmental work!
Sector Breakdown
Building operations
Maintaining buildings takes a lot of resources. If you think about it, your home needs to be provided with water, electricity, sewage, heating, cooling, gas, and so forth. Multiply that by some billions and you have the number of homes in the world that needs to be provided with these utilities. We have a lot to do to make buildings more efficient at providing these utilities, but there are plenty of solutions, naming just a handful below.
Orbital
About: In the Nordics, each person uses about 25,000 liters of water annually when showering. Global warming and urbanization are straining our water resources. Orbital has developed a circular shower that saves up to 90% water and up to 80 % energy while you take long nice showers with a clean conscience.
Example open positions: Field Service Technician, Talent and Growth Manager, UX/UI Designer
Mimbly
About: Develops a sustainable laundry solution called the Mimbox, an add-on solution that helps professional laundry become more sustainable, by recycling water, and reducing microplastic pollution and CO2 emissions.
Example open positions: Salesperson, Mechatronics Engineer
Greenely
About: Using the Greenely mobile app, households are able to get an overview of their energy consumption and personalized feedback on their energy behavior to reduce energy consumption and save money.
Example open positions: UX Designer, Account Manager, Backend Developer
Manufacturing
We produce a whole lot of stuff to still human consumption needs. If you look around you’ll see stuff everywhere, from your device reading this, the cup that’s holding your coffee, and your clothes. The production of these items is resource-heavy, it requires water, electricity, natural resources, and lots of other types of material. We might need to consider cutting down our consumption of stuff, but we’ll need manufacturing to keep our civilization afloat, so there are also some cool companies doing something about its impact on climate change.
Renewcell
About: Turning discarded textiles into Circulose® – a 100% textile-to-textile recycled and biodegradable raw material for the fashion industry. “Recycling clothes finally works”.
Example open positions: Systems Engineer, Feedstock Sourcing Manager
Graphmatech
About: Graphmatech has succeeded in designing a graphene hybrid material, Aros Graphene™, with the exceptional properties of graphene, but much easier to manufacture and apply. The material displays extreme thermal and electrical conductivity as well as very low dry friction. Application areas are cooling of electronics, energy storage, sliding contacts, and low friction self-lubricating surfaces.
Probably the sector that people are the most aware of - we hear a lot about flight shame, how everyone should buy an electric car, and so forth. Not to mention cargo ships and trucks that contribute their fair share. Maybe a bit too much focus on this considering the sizes of the other pieces of the pie, but still a juicy 14% we need to cut. However, there are solutions to this, such as electric vehicles, charging infrastructure, better public transport, and so forth.
Northvolt
About: Sure, we’ll mention them, the battery giant. Most people know about them, Northvolt is manufacturing batteries for electric vehicles at scale. Probably the biggest and most exciting sustainability project in the Nordics.
Location: Multiple cities in both Sweden and other countries
Example open positions: Frontend Engineer, 3D Artist, Data Scientist
Heart aerospace
About: Heart Aerospace is building an electric regional airliner certified for passenger flight by 2026. Its mission is to create the fastest, most affordable, and most sustainable mode of transport for regional travel.
Example open positions: Head of Customer Support & Services, Prototyping Engineer, Executive Assistant
Elonroad
About: Developing a holistic charging solution for all electric vehicles. The system can be used to build charging infrastructure such as electric roads, charging stations, and opportunity chargers at stops and loading bays
Example open positions: Creative car mechanic, Power Electronics PCB Engineer
Agriculture
Yes, it’s funny but it’s true, cows burp and fart methane that goes up into the atmosphere, and methane is more than 25 times as potent as our old friend carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere, but does also only lasts about a decade in the atmosphere, whereas CO2 persists for a couple of centuries. You’d think, how can a cow have such an impact on the climate? Well, we eat a lot of meat and dairy products, which means a lot of cows, which means a lot of methane. But this is not the only issue, we also use a lot of land for agriculture, eating up natural habitats and burning down forests that already absorb CO2, double whammy! Fortunately, there’s a lot of innovation going on in this sector, all the way from plant-based protein, lab-produced meat, to trapping cows’ farts and burps.
Optima Planta
About: One of many vertical farming companies in Sweden (and in the world), Optima Planta, however, differentiates itself by using aeroponics in hyperlocal environments which is good for optimization of environment variables to increase efficiency and ultimately maximizing harvest outputs.
About: You’ve probably seen their products in grocery stores, such as the oat milk. The company’s patented enzyme technology copies nature’s own process and turns fiber-rich oats into nutritional liquid food that is perfectly designed for humans. Hint: they replace dairy products, hence, cutting emissions from cattle.
Location: Malmo and many other countries in the world
Example open positions: Business Developer, Head of Manufacturing, Marine Biologist
CarbonCloud
About: Research-based food-tech startup with a disruptive web-based SaaS solution that enables detailed calculations of climate footprints of food products and production processes. This enables food producers across the world to calculate and analyze the climate footprints of their product portfolios at a fraction of the cost and time spent on traditional consultancy-based life-cycle assessments.
Example open positions: Brand Marketer, Regional Sales Manager, People and Culture Manager
Whywaste
About: Whywaste was founded with the singular vision to eliminate food waste at food retailers. To do this, they developed software solutions to improve in-store processes for grocery retailers. Their advanced date checking solution is a data-management solution that helps the shop workers accurately record and manage sell-by dates.
Close second after transportation of sectors people are aware of - most of you know the story, burning fossil fuels is bad for the environment, and contributes the most to carbon-dioxide emissions. Coal is a real dirty one, not to mention oil, and there are issues with natural gas and other forms of generating electricity as well. However, the buzzword “the green transition” is usually associated with shutting down electricity generation from fossil fuels and transitioning to renewable energy such as solar, wind, and wave energy.
Svea Solar
About: One of Europe's leading solar companies, providing solar panels to homes along with other energy efficiency tools.
Location: Many cities in Sweden and in other countries in the world
Example open positions: Project Manager B2B, Solar Cell Installer, Installation Electrician
Climeon
About: World leader in converting low-temperature heat into clean electricity. Climeon produces heat power systems, converting waste heat and geothermal heat into clean electricity.
About: CorPower Ocean designs, manufactures, and operates wave energy farms. The wave farm solution has a unique design inspired by the pumping principles of the human heart, allowing it to survive the toughest storms.
Example open positions: Technical Project Manager, Mechanical Service Technician, Procurement Engineer
Epishine
About: Epishine works with product development and marketing of the third generation of solar cells; organic solar cells. The unique qualities of those include being semitransparent, light weighted and 100% organic resulting in a very low energy payback time.
Example open positions: Process Development Engineer, Machine Operator
Hexicon
About: Hexicon is a Swedish cleantech company that develops wind power projects in deep waters internationally. The company has its own patented technology; TwinWind, which consists of a floating foundation with two turbines. The innovative twin turbine design enables more turbines per sea area, which increases the energy yield and reduces the environmental impact.
… and many more companies (not only in Sweden but in the whole world!) are working towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions in each sector.
Did we leave out a company you think should have been included? Did you find your dream job at one of these companies? Do you just want to say hi? Reach out to us below!
Sources
IPCC Report: “AR5 Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability”
