The new green economy is about to unfold, dramatically changing the face of how Australia does business.

The impending carbon trading scheme, and other voluntary climate change-reducing policies, is placing "green skills’’ in a prime bargaining position for savvy jobseekers.

However, the effectiveness of any move to sustainability is tempered by who can do the grunt work. And with a skills shortage biting into every industry across the nation, the march to be green could be set for a stumble.

The CSIRO earlier this year found that there is a skills shortage when it comes to helping carbon emitters turn environmentally responsible.

"But achieving the transition to a low carbon sustainable economy will require a massive mobilisation of skills and training-both to equip new workers and to enable appropriate changes in practices by the 3 million workers already employed in these key sectors influencing our environmental footprint. Current approaches do not appear sufficient for meeting these challenges,’’ the organisation’s report on Growing the Green Economy says.

Whatever shape or in whichever industry, Greenfest expo director Colman Ridge says employees should learn these green skills now to take advantage of the "next phase in business’’.

"Every business is going to become greener, so that requires people (employees) who think like that for business to succeed and compete,’’ Ridge says.

"(The adoption of green principles by business) is still in the early adopter stage, the leadership stage. Companies who are leaders in their industry are already re-engineering their systems for green processes.

"There is a new phase of recruitment coming, too, where new recruits don’t want to work for companies who don’t have plans to protect the long-term future of the planet.

"We have got a house full of young people lining up here to work for free, and the big companies down town can’t get them to work for them for anything. They are lining up to be part of a change they know should happen. For older people, you have to explain and intellectualise what it all means, but younger people are telling you this is the way it is going to be. Business is just catching up.’’

Even organisations dedicated to environmentalism are finding it tough to recruit new talent.

Greening Australia human resources manager Gareth Smith says he’s recruiting for a project manager for his Brisbane office, as well as skilled field workers.

"There are still two discreet arms of employment,‘’ Smith says.

"The first is operating the carbon market, and planning for the habitats that are going to be used for carbon offsets.

"That is Greening Australia’s focus, which means we don’t just plant monocultures-the same old thing over 37 hectares. We restore habitats.

"The other arm, besides planning, is the huge demand for the manual labour -skilled labour that can do the planting and the weed management.’’

However, making big money as an employee in the new green economy is a tough task for some workers.

"There is to some degree in the consulting side of things, because private consulting firms do have a lot of money to bandy around,’’ Smith says.

"But we are still a community, not-for-profit organisation, and generally the field work side of things is not a high-pay industry.

"But the impact of bigger wages is that it will force the cost per tonne of carbon to go up. Anybody with skills and a passion will be able to grow a career very easily in these green jobs.’’