Celebrating Green Careers Week – MCS catch up with Emma Bohan, General Manager of South Yorkshire-based IMS Heat Pumps

  Posted by: electime      10th November 2023

MCS is celebrating Green Careers Week, 6-11 November, to raise awareness of careers in renewable energy and heating.

In pursuit of the UK’s Net Zero targets, green careers are in demand now more than ever. But what is a ‘green career’ and why should you consider one? We recently caught up with a few of our contractors to find out their thoughts, experiences, and advice on green careers. Here’s what they’ve got to say.

We first caught up with Emma Bohan, General Manager of South Yorkshire-based IMS Heat Pumps.

IMS Heat Pumps was founded more than 25 years ago in Perth, Scotland and expanded by the group of family and friends to Sheffield, England. Since then, the business has grown to design, install, and maintain hundreds of heat pumps a year across England and Scotland.

We asked Emma to share her thoughts on green careers, demand across the heat pump sector, and why you should consider a green career today. According to Emma, a green career is any job which provides services across the renewable, sustainable and environmental sectors.

“There are the obvious green careers, such as a heat pump engineer, where you will be installing heat pump systems. However, at IMS Heat Pumps, we employ a range of project co-ordinators, finance, administration, and marketing people, as well as a team of qualified heat loss and system designers who form our sales team – all of which I consider green careers.” If you’re considering a green career, “run towards it”, says Emma, “you’ll not regret it!”

With the UK transitioning away from fossil fuels to renewables, Emma believes that the green careers landscape is an exciting space to work in. “Green careers are soon going to be everywhere – there is currently so much innovation going on and such a buzz around the industry”, she says. Although IMS Heat Pumps have been installing heat pumps for over 25 years, Emma says that they have seen a rapid surge in the demand for heat pumps since 2020. This reflects the demand for jobs across the heat pump and renewable industry as a whole.

MCS has recently helped develop the UK’s first ever dedicated Low Carbon Heating Technician Apprenticeship. Emma is a strong advocate for the apprenticeship and believes it is very much needed within the industry. “Heat pumps are a job for life – they are not going anywhere! Despite the naysayers, the end of the gas boiler is nigh!”, says Emma. Emma also told us that she would like to see the apprenticeship being offered across every trade college as soon as possible. The new apprenticeship is great pathway to a green career and reflects the current demand for green jobs across the sector.

Empowering women to power the green transition

According to statistics from the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), 72 per cent of green jobs are held by men. When we asked Emma how we can get more women into the renewable sector, she said that we need to have more examples of women in trades in schools and colleges – “If you can’t see it, you can’t be it! We need to promote a general acceptance that this is not just a job for the boys!”