China: Skill development for green entrepreneurship

Green jobs activities in China put a particular focus on green entrepreneurship training and skills development for green jobs.

The Green Business Options training scheme (GBO) implemented in China is a training programme that helps young entrepreneurs acquire skills to develop feasible green business ideas. During the pilot phase (2010-2012), thousands of young people in five provinces benefited from the training, and since 2013 GBO has been expanded to other provinces by applying an upgraded training kit. Feedback from participants was collected and analysed to draw findings from the project experiences and provide recommendations to develop next-step strategies. 

The project Decent work in the Green Economy (2013-2014) expanded and built on the area of skill development for green jobs in China. The project, which aimed at closing the gap between the training provision and the labour market demands for workers with appropriate skills for green occupations, developed training material on skills for green jobs in the energy efficient building sector and pilot tested this training material in training institutions in Nanjing city, Jiangsu province. The results of the pilot tests will enable the formulation of a skills-for-green-jobs strategy in the energy efficient building sector of the Jiangsu province. The curriculum development will also contribute to accelerating the development of national skills standards regarding energy efficiency and the overall development of national skills standards and policy framework.