Identification and green grading of jobs in the renewable energy field of the biomass: A grounded theory study

Background and aims: Fossil fuels Emission and their limited resources make to use renewable energy with more sustainable energy sources and less minimal environmental impacts. One of the most appropriate renewable energies considered lots of advantages including being renewable and environmentally friendly and containing social and economical interests, is Biomass. “Biomass” means a power source that is comprised of, but not limited to, combustible residues or gases from forest products manufacturing, waste, byproducts, or products from agricultural and orchard crops, waste or co-products products from livestock and poultry operations, waste or byproducts from and food processing, urban wood waste, municipal solid waste, municipal liquid waste treatment operations, and landfill gas. Due to the wide availability of biomass worldwide, mainly because it can be obtained as a by-product of many industrial and agricultural processes, biomass represents a growing renewable energy source with high growth potential. Biomass helps reduce the amount of GHG that give more impact to global warming and climate change. The biomass emissions level is far smaller compared to fossil fuels. The basic difference between biomass and fossil fuels when it comes to amount of carbon emissions is: all the CO2 which has been absorbed by plant for its growth is going back in the atmosphere during its burning for the production of biomass energy. While the CO2 produced from fossil fuels is going to atmosphere where it increases greenhouse effect. Another great advantage of biomass energy is that it is an  indigenous fuel. The fuels from biomass materials can be produced locally and no high technology is required. Producing fuel from biomass materials reduces the dependence of a country  on foreign resources for their fuel requirements. Moreover, since this indigenous fuel is labor intensive, it can contribute to the generation of new jobs, particularly in rural and farming communities. The number of employed workers required is 3-6 times greater than the fossil energy production in the associated processes. This study was aimed to identification and green grading of environmental management in that’s jobs. Some other socio-economic benefits can be counted such as slowing down the migration from the rural areas to cities, decreasing the issues associated with rapid  urbanization,  and  developing  a  biodiesel production  industry. Among its great benefits is the forest use of the territory, which would also serve to clean the forest and thus prevent forest fires, and the ability to generate jobs. Biomass generates continuous employment such as the extraction of raw materials from the countryside and the bush. This study was aimed to identification and green grading of environmental management in that’s jobs. The research questions are: 1. What are green job indicators? and 2. has renewable energy biomass business indicators of green jobs? Methods: This study was qualitative – quantitative, first according to the grounded theory qualitative method semi-deep interviewed with 50 environmental experts in the Environmental Protection Agency, the municipality, faculty members of the universities, the natural resources and watershed management, agriculture ministry and NGOs active in the environment conducted a with purposeful sampling (snowball). Regarding qualitative data validation were used constant data comparison, reviewing the observers and handwriting by participants and use of foreign and expert researchers familiar with qualitative research as an observer. Then, data was analyzed using the grounded theory of open, axial and selective coding analyzed in MAXQDA software. Once coding categories emerge, the next step is to link them together in theoretical models around a central category that hold everything together. In order to explain the grounded theory, green jobs are considered as the central variable, and the main line of research is defined using reminders and diagrams around it, and finally the green indicators derived from it are developed. Based on them, researcher-made questionnaire was designed in a combination, closed response with 5-rate likert scale. In order to determine the validity of the questionnaire, the content validity was used with the lawshe model and with reviewing previous studies was determined, the scope of the questionnaire in greenness of the job, and the reliability of the questionnaire was obtained using Cronbach's alpha coefficient for internal consistency. Cronbach's alpha value for each research question was more than 0.7, the reliability of the questionnaire was approved. Also, the Cronbach's alpha coefficient of the questionnaire was 0.890. In order to estimate the repeatability, the retest method and the ICC index were used that index was 0.996 (p <0.001), indicating its high repeatability. For estimating the results of greenness and its degree in the jobs of renewable energy biomass, were used statistical analysis of Kolmogrov-Smirnov test, single-sample t-test and Friedman test in SPSS software.  Result: Findings of the qualitative research on the structure of green job identification and prioritization were discussed in six categories including establishment in accordance with the legal and technological infrastructure of the green job as context, green job as a phenomenon, environmental pollution elimination and the health risks reduction of the community as causal conditions, green management as operational strategies, environmental empowerment of jobs as an intermediary conditions and economic and environmental benefits as a consequence. The results of quantitative to showed that jobs studied are considered green jobs and their green grading are as follows: 1. Maintenance (mean=5/61), 2. System Design (mean=4/83), 3. Training (mean=4/22), 4. Quality Monitoring and Quality (mean=4/03), 5. Collection (mean=3/64), 6. Manufacturer (mean=3/61) and 7. Worker and System Administrator (mean=2/06). According to the results, components of green jobs are defined including: (1. explaining Green Jobs, Productivity of Occupations, 2. environmental Protection and Health, 3. Green potentials and incentives, 4. environmental Standards and Indices of Health and Green Management, 5. environmental and health challenges and solving energy crisis with the help of green jobs, 6. environmental education and green culture, 7.environmental empowerment through a variety of environmental and health education, informing and accompanying NGOs, 8. economic-ecological profitability and the optimistic approach to economic interests (green economy) and impact of economic issues, profitability, financial support, market regulation, and return on investment in the process of greening and green expanding businesses). Results show that green indices of occupations are 1- environmental and health of profile occupational, 2- strengths and weaknesses, threats and opportunities green jobs, 3- green supply chain management of businesses, 4- impact of green jobs on sustainable development and community health, 5- effect of environmental education on the green performance of occupations, the impact of environmental advertising on green performance and 6- reduce employee costs and increase business profits through environmental management. These green jobs literature extols the virtues of generating energy using “wood waste and other byproducts, including agricultural byproducts, ethanol, paper pellets, used railroad ties, sludge wood, solid byproducts, and old utility poles. Several waste products are also used in biomass, including landfill gas, digester gas, municipal solid waste, and methane. Conclusion: The green features of the biomass business are included solving the problem of fossil fuels, caused by fossil energy and renewable energy sources. identification and green grading jobs diversifying energy sources, sustainable development, securing energy, removing environmental and health problems would help to managers and policy makers for identifying and providing executive solutions and identifying multifaceted priorities for green management. Despite the high potential of bio-economy in renewable energy (biomass) and high amounts of raw materials in the agricultural waste and sewage has not been fully realized. To achieve of developing a competitive economy, low-carbon resources with efficient resources, global economic markets have shifted strategy towards renewable energies, so as to create green jobs in order to reduce environmental problems (waste and climate change). For performance of macroeconomic policy in notification Supreme Leader on the restructuring of the country's economic structure has proposed policies to change reducing dependencies on fossil fuels and external resources towards the creation and development of green jobs in the field of renewable energy, especially biomass, because there are a lot of raw materials in the country, especially in the villages and without necessary to high technologies. Biomass development increase energy efficiency, the use of renewable energy resources and the creation of a favourable environment for investment in energy efficiency measures and the generation of ‘green’ jobs. The rural development prospects for green job growth are mixed. Rural areas contain biomass feedstocks which will be increasingly relied upon to offset fossil fuel dependencies. The distribution of those feedstocks, however, is not uniform across rural areas. Furthermore, the technologies to convert those feedstocks into fuels and other uses are yet to be demonstrated at commercially successful scales. Both policy development and research activities should be focused on the efficient utilization of rural natural resources, human capital, and rural infrastructure in achieving national green policies. The green economy appears to be fertile ground for unbiased, academic research to examine some of the regional consequences of green jobs growth and green jobs policies, to include an examination of rural opportunities, but going well beyond that dimension to include the integration of statewide and multi-state regional development opportunities as well as consequences. This study was not about raw materials (waste and sewage) to produce renewable energy biomass, and it is possible that this section may also be effective in the creation and development of green jobs, then there may be restrictions on the generalized findings, interpretations, and attributes of the causation of variables. Therefore, it is suggested that future research into this part of the process of producing renewable energy biomass should be considered.