Reimagining Green Skills Training: Why We're Evolving the OPF Academy
By Neil Yeoh, CEO & Founder, OPF.
Green skills need to be accessible to everyone. If we don't double our green talent workforce by 2050, we'll miss our net-zero goals (according to LinkedIn). After two years running the OPF Academy and providing over $1 million in scholarships to 1,000 professionals across 70 nations, I've come to realize that equal access to green upskilling doesn't just build careers, it can provide optimism and purpose to professionals who want to seek more in their careers than going through the motions.
The Journey That Led Us Here
When I finished my Midcareer Masters of Environmental Management in May 2020, I recall staring out the window of my second bedroom down to the last few hundred dollars in my bank account and thinking about rent I wasn't sure I could afford. It was terrifying, but it was also the most meaningful time of my life, where interest & investments into climate tech was rising just as OnePointFive was launching
As we scaled our climate expert-in-residence model over the years, helping organizations pursue net-zero through providing fractional capacity and capabilities, a pattern emerged: we were spending >50% of our time explaining basic concepts, frameworks, and approaches. A systemic barrier became clear: professionals wanted climate jobs but needed green skills to get them, yet needed climate jobs to develop those skills.
Our answer was the OPF Academy: an 8-week cohort program painting the entire net-zero journey from science-based targets through emissions measurement, climate risk evaluation, decarbonization investment, and project management. Built from (at the time) 100+ real net-zero projects, it leveraged coding bootcamp principles to deliver practitioner-led upskilling that actually worked.
Why We're Evolving Now
Fast forward to 2025, things have changed. The climate profession has matured dramatically. The conversation has shifted from "What are Scope 1, 2, 3 emissions?" to "How do we engage suppliers to decarbonize Scope 3 hotspots?" This maturity calls for deeper, more specialized competencies.
Three critical trends that have reshaped our approach:
First, specialization is no longer optional. Just as any maturing profession develops recognized competencies, climate work now requires industry-recognized certifications in specific skills like carbon accounting, not just broad foundational knowledge.
Second, we're learning to do climate work without always saying "climate." With shifting US geopolitics, the smartest organizations now frame this work through business language: economic mobility, energy efficiency, cost savings, supply chain resilience. The work hasn't changed; how we learn, communicate, and apply skills is evolving to becoming more mainstream.
Third, sustainability must be embedded across entire organizations. We're at the heart of the compliance movement, but forward-thinking companies recognize value creation opportunities, from mitigating climate risks to building resilient supply chains. We can't rely on a handful of sustainability unicorns to get everything done
The Embedded Sustainability Movement
This macro-shift reminds me of the quality movement. In the rise of Japanese manufacturing, organizations had dedicated quality professionals driving total quality management. But as the field matured and moved from compliance to value creation, quality competency & skills became embedded throughout organizations, within every role, department, and function at differing levels
We're witnessing the same transformation in the climate / sustainability profession. LinkedIn already finds that most jobs today include green skills in their role description. Think procurement professionals driving value chain (Scope 3) reductions through supplier engagement; to marketing professionals translating emission hotspots into campaigns that drive business value.
This embedded approach is triumphing over the limited capacity & capabilities of sustainability teams tasked to do it all, especially with limited budgets & in areas outside their zone of genius. It's far more effective and sticky for team members through an organization to see the value of & invest into their green upskilling. Every professional can (and need to) be part of the change and can be equipped to contribute meaningfully.
Our New Vision: Short-Courses That Fit You
This is why we made the intentional decision to evolve our flagship program. We've transformed our 55 hours of ESG content—spanning 20+ industry and competency deep-dives—into focused short-course certifications. These target key in-demand green competencies that any professional wanting to contribute to climate action: from carbon accounting, emission hotspot identification, energy efficiency optimization, sustainable procurement, and more.
Each course is designed to be completed in 4 weeks while working full-time, providing rapid, practical access to the latest skills & industry expert advice that provide professionals (who commit to it) a long-term competitive advantage in their careers, and purpose & empowerment to be part of the change.
Why Trusted, Practitioner-Led Content Matters More Than Ever
We live in an attention economy with seemingly “unlimited” content. I personally use YouTube whenever I need to fix something around the house. But when it comes to professional upskilling, especially related to our careers, the stakes are fundamentally higher.
Where do you find trusted upskilling on practical green skills when your career is on the line?
Unless you're already within the networks and professional circles of those working in the field, it's hard to trust what you consume. I recently prompted Gemini about the European climate disclosure regulations (i.e. CSRD) and the AI model hallucinated, quoting outdated facts about which organizations are in-scope, referencing links to outdated articles. Even AI gets it wrong.
Our field is evolving at breakneck speed. Standards, regulations, and frameworks update quarterly. Content becomes outdated rapidly, and unless you're swimming in the right direction, it's easy to get left behind by the wave of net-zero momentum. The wave is already cresting, as we fall behind a global milestone to roughly halve emission by 2030 to stay on-track.
This is exactly why we (painstakingly) built our own in-house recording studio at OnePointFive, and why I spent over 30+ hours in front of a teleprompter camera every Sunday for over a quarter last year recording. We've leveraged AI intentionally to outline video scripts and keep our content up to date to ensure the best learning outcomes. Every professional deserves and needs updated practical knowledge in days, not months to close the gap between climate ambition and climate progress.
I believe this is the future: professionals upskilling on the latest industry knowledge within a trusted learning platform and community, where content is always accessible and grounded in real world application. This is what we’ve built.
A Workforce Movement, Not Just a Course Catalog
This isn't a "take a course and leave" situation. We're building a global professional network where alumni stick around, support each other, and apply green skills throughout their careers, diving deeper into core skill areas, sharing practices, frameworks, approaches, and templates. We already have 1,000 professionals in 70 nations in OnePointFive community, and we'll see this number grow more rapidly with our short-course model.
Our original goal of training 100,000 professionals by 2030 is no longer just an ambitious target, it's necessary for our world, which is evolving faster than ever.
My personal vision (which I wrote when I was 25yrs old in Sydney early in my career) has remained constant over the past decade: empowering a movement of professionals to use their innate talents to their greatest potential and for the greatest good. Every morning, this vision excites me as I lead OPF and help others step into this future.
I believe the world would be most ideal if we achieve this together.
This is my warm invitation to join us for one of our short-courses as we launch more throughout the year, or for you to share this opportunity with your network so every professional can join our workforce training movement, making climate action mainstream through the trojan horse of in-demand green upskilling.
Thank you for your ongoing support of me, my team, and our relentless efforts to keep OnePointFive’s vision and mission alive. Reach out anytime via my LinkedIn or neil@opf.degree - would love to hear from you.
