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You’ve heard about it a thousand times—the accounting talent pipeline crisis. But this time there might be an unexpected solution to the talent crunch.
While accounting as a career has seen—let’s be kind and say a decline in interest—in recent years, sustainability careers have become the cool new kids on the block. The answer to accounting’s popularity decline might be combining the two into a role that gives employees a sense of purpose.
And luckily there’s already a role that exists for which companies are looking to hire—carbon accountants.
Accountants with a purpose. Millennials and Gen Zers are looking for purpose in their workplaces. According to a 2024 Deloitte survey, 90% of surveyed Gen Z and millennials said “having a sense of purpose is important to their overall job satisfaction and well-being.” Carbon accounting might be the way to bring that aspiration into the finance profession.
Instead of tracking dollars and cents, carbon accountants track the emissions and environmental impacts of business operations. But beyond that, according to Ian Thomson, professor of accounting and sustainability at the University of Dundee in Scotland, a carbon accountant’s role is to help businesses align their objectives with protecting the planet from even more harm. It allows them to factor in impacts, costs, and solutions that are excluded when companies only focus on money, he told CFO Brew.
“Financial accounting almost separates you as a human from other humans and from nature,” Thomson said. “When you start looking at greenhouse gas, you have to look at the connections.”
Thomson said he has “absolutely” seen an increased interest in carbon accounting among his students over the past few years, and credits the uptick with carbon accounting’s inherent purpose.
Businesses with a need. And it’s not just accountants who’ve bought in on the hype of carbon accounting. Companies know they’ll need this new skill set in the future.
Even though the SEC has backed off from climate requirements during the second Trump administration, other stock exchanges and countries have not. Within the next few years, Brazil, China’s Shanghai Stock Exchange, the EU, Hong Kong Exchanges, New Zealand, the UK, the state of California, and more will all require emissions data to be disclosed in order to be listed or do business within its borders. And UK procurement rules now require companies vying for contracts over £5 million to have a 2050 net zero strategy.
“I think there’s a whole lot of these different pressures coming on that are tied to this investment,” Thomson said. “They’re tied to consumer boycotts. They’re tied to business relocation models, as [resources] are no longer there.”
Beyond regulations, financial institutions worry about climate change because of the risk of stranded assets. Thomson pointed to mines, oil wells, and farmland that could vanish as sea levels rise—even airports and entire cities may end up underwater. Lenders don’t want to finance investments that may never yield a return. Carbon accountants can help avoid those bad investments.
Thomson expects sectors like insurance, agriculture, and transportation to be the first movers on hiring and taking advantage of carbon accountants.
“A lot of the problems that people are associating with carbon accounting, things like double counting, accounting has the solution,” Thomson said.
An opportunity. Accounting schools are starting to take notice. Many prestigious schools, even in the US, have added carbon accounting curricula to their offerings, including UC Berkeley, Stanford, and Harvard.
Professional accounting bodies like the ACCA have published guides for carbon accounting and have committed to upskilling the accountant work force. But it’s still a bit of the Wild West out there, Thomson said. Government and industry haven’t coalesced around one carbon accounting method or regulations, and there are many standards from different organizations, including the GHG protocol, the Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials, and the IPCC, to name just a few.
It’s also early days for carbon accounting software and technology.
“There is a problem with being an early adopter,” Thomson said. “Right now the software is not there. You’ll be helping develop the software. But that’s often costly, takes time. There’s no real infrastructure in place.”
But “if you want to future-proof your career,” he said, there’s no better time to get into carbon accounting.