Planning and Analysis
Sustainability Specialist
Career Area: Planning and Analysis
Occupation Group: Energy and Sustainability Specialists
Salary
Percentile wages tell how much a certain percentage of an overall population in a geographic area or within a given industry or field makes. The percentile wage estimate is the value of a wage below which a certain percent of workers fall.
An example would be the 25th percentile, 25 percent of workers employed in that occupation earn less and 75 percent earn more than the estimated wage value. At the 75th percentile, 75 percent of workers employed in that occupation earn less and 25 percent earn more than the estimated wage value.
A typical Sustainability Specialist earns the following wages (national and state):
State
The average salary in North Carolina for those pursuing this career is $85,790
National
The average salary in the United States for those pursuing this career is $75,008
What Does a Professional in this Career Do?
Addresses environmental sustainability issues for companies or organizations, including university systems. Develops strategies for reducing energy costs, promotes environmentally friendly production, business or maintenance practices.
Employment Trends
The job demand and job growth statistics shown here were derived from job posts over the past year. Expected job growth projections are extrapolated from year-over-year job post listing history.
Job demand and job growth is expected at the following rates:
| Growth | ||
|---|---|---|
| North Carolina | 65 | +14.3% |
| Nationwide | 2436 | +8.8% |
Skills
A professional in this position typically utilizes the following skills in the course of everyday work in this exciting and challenging field:
Baseline Skills
The following are baseline skills every Sustainability Specialist is expected to have in order to experience success in this field:
- Communication Skills: The ability to convey information to another effectively and efficiently.
- Planning: Working experience with the process of thinking about and organizing the activities required to achieve desired goals.
- Teamwork / Collaboration: Experience working in collaborative efforts with a team to achieve a common goal or to complete a task in the most effective and efficient way.
- Research: Experience performing creative and systematic work to understand a product, market, or customer, either before building a new solution, or to troubleshoot an existing issue
- Microsoft Excel: Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet developed by Microsoft for Windows, macOS, Android and iOS. It features calculation, graphing tools, pivot tables, and a macro programming language called Visual Basic for Applications.
Specialized Skills
These skills are specific to working in this career:
- Project Management: Project management is the discipline of initiating, planning, executing, controlling, and closing the work of a team to achieve specific goals and meet specific success criteria.
- Budgeting: Experience planning how the financial resources of a business or department are to be allocated during the next business period.
- Environmental Science: Environmental science is an interdisciplinary academic field that integrates physical, biological and information sciences (including ecology, biology, physics, chemistry, zoology, mineralogy, oceanology, limnology, soil science, geology, atmospheric science, and geodesy) to the study of the environment, and the solution of environmental problems.
- Scheduling: Working experience making schedules, which are basic time-management tools, consisting of a list of times at which possible tasks, events, or actions are intended to take place withing an organization.
- Procurement: Procurement is the process of finding, agreeing terms and acquiring goods, services or works from an external source, often via a tendering or competitive bidding process.
Distinguishing Skills
Any Sustainability Specialist that possesses the following skills will stand out against the competition:
- Energy Efficiency: Efficient energy use, sometimes simply calledenergy efficiency, is the goal to reduce the amount of energy required to provide products and services.
- Climate Change: Climate change is a change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns when that change lasts for an extended period of time (i.e., decades to millions of years).
- Renewable Energy: Renewable energy is energy that is collected from renewable resources, which are naturally replenished on a human timescale, such as sunlight, wind, rain, tides, waves, and geothermal heat.
- Environmental Sustainability: Environmental sustainability is the rates of renewable resource harvest, pollution creation, and non-renewable resource depletion that can be continued indefinitely.
- Green Building: Sustainable architecture is architecture that seeks to minimize the negative environmental impact of buildings by efficiency and moderation in the use of materials, energy, and development space and the ecosystem at large.
Education
This career typically requires the following level of education. The numbers presented in the pie charts below were derived from actual job posts over the past year. Not all job postings list education requirements.
.| Education Level | % |
| Bachelor's Degree | 61% |
| Master's Degree | 35% |
| Doctoral Degree | 0% |
Experience
This position typically requires the following level of experience. The numbers presented in the pie charts below were derived from actual job posts over the past year. Not all job postings list experience requirements.
| Experience Required | % |
| 0 to 2 years | 21% |
| 3 to 5 years | 44% |
| 6 to 8 years | 16% |
Many of the programs offered through NC State are designed for working professionals who need additional credentials to enhance existing work experience.
Students who do not have the expected level of experience may wish to look into internship and employment opportunities.
Common Job Titles
It is possible to find work in this field in positions commonly listed as the following job titles:
- Water Resources Project Manager
- Sustainability & Esg Manager - , , In , Va
- Sustainability Specialist
- Sustainability Manager
- Sustainability Analyst
Similar Occupations
If you are interested in exploring similar occupations, you may want to research the following job titles:
The wage and employment trend information shown here represents historical data and does not guarantee future conditions. Data is downloaded regularly from Burning Glass Technologies. For more information about how they gather data and what it represents, see Burning Glass Technologies - Frequently Asked Questions.