Industry Decarbonization Lead

Summary

Join Climate-KIC as their Industry Decarbonization Lead and contribute to their mission of accelerating climate action through systems innovation. Based in Poland, Slovenia, Italy, or Belgium, this fully remote role offers a high degree of flexibility. You will work with businesses to help them meet their sustainability ambitions, developing services to support industry transitions and building partnerships. The position requires an advanced degree, 5+ years of experience in climate-related projects, and expertise in decarbonization strategies. Climate-KIC is a mission-driven organization committed to diversity and inclusion, offering a supportive and flexible work environment.

Requirements

• Advanced degree (Master’s or PhD) in climate science, environmental engineering, or related fields or economics/business degree
• Proven experience: 5 years implementing climate and environment related projects, preferably with businesses
• Thorough understanding of emissions and carbon measuring and reporting tools, renewable energy, offsets, energy efficiency solutions, circular economy, life cycle assessment is expected
• Knowledge about ESG based business strategies and business models and how European Green Deal regulations are influencing business operations
• Expertise in transforming decarbonization roadmaps into marketable, demand-driven solutions
• Experience conducting market research to validate demand for climate transformation services
• Knowledge and experience in applying futures literacy approaches (foresight, future-proofing approaches, future scenario building, etc.) to industry or place-based transformation processes
• Proven track record of working with industry on decarbonization/sustainability initiatives, especially in hard-to-abate sectors
• Proven track record and work experience in international and multi-disciplinary environments and contexts, fostering multi-stakeholder collaboration, and ensuring successful collaboration and delivery
• Comfort and confidence working at systems levels, working in areas of complexity and uncertainty with multiple partners and relationships
• Comfortable working with a high degree of independence to steer ongoing programs and initiatives
• Creating value propositions, building proposals, business models of services
• Ability to navigate government policies, subsidies, and compliance frameworks for industry transitions
• Ability to design and develop climate-related services and solutions for industry partners
• Emphasizing listening to learn, empathy, human-centered design, agility, empowerment, and collaboration
• Strong ability to build positive and fruitful relationships with a wide range of stakeholders
• Design and facilitation of meetings and workshops
• Seeing patterns of connection and difference; using diverse perspectives to catalyse breakthrough thinking, reflection and learning; culturally aware and skilled in working with diversity and inclusiveness
• Proficiency in English with exceptional written and verbal communication skills

Responsibilities

• Working with businesses to help them meet their sustainability (climate and environmental) ambitions and excel at the necessary transformations, setting ground for their strategic transition plans
• Bridging sustainability, digitalisation and competitiveness challenges and opportunities in shaping feasible future pathways for industries
• Developing services to support industry transitions – beyond ESG compliance: into strategy setting, learning and capacity building, clean (decarbonised and circular) industry scenarios, strategies and business models
• Building partnerships with industry representatives/associations to enable transformation of value chains and individual businesses
• Co-creating the design of a new Climate KIC learning track for industry, to reimagine sustainability and competitiveness (beyond ESG as a compliance tool, using its principles and methods as a strategic tool for successful green and digital transformations)
• Clean industry transformation – designing and validating a new commercial service of Climate KIC: a co-creation format for future proofing possible scenarios of industry decarbonization
• Adapting the existing Climate KIC’s methodology of strategic innovation & risk to both value chains and individual business transformations
• Creating value propositions and service models (potential offerings for commercial and philanthropic market to fund) of the above services: Beyond ESG fast learning track, Clean industry transformation scenarios, Strategic innovation and risk of value chains and industries
• Building meaningful partnerships with industry representatives to enable transformation of value chains and individual businesses
• Participate in additional attempts to fundraise for programmes to maximise impact and scale given the criticality of the climate challenge
• Contributing to thought leadership with technical expertise and knowledge on value chains transformations, circularity and decarbonization
• Supporting business representatives in becoming systems thinking practitioners, to design and implement more transformative measures across a range of intervention areas. Workshop design, preparation and facilitation for diverse audience types

Preferred Qualifications

Familiarity with different approaches and emerging trends related to strategic and systems thinking, including design for policy and futures literacy will be considered as added value

Benefits

• High degree of flexibility to accommodate all working patterns
• Fully remote working role with a high degree of flexibility