Getting Young People Excited About Green Careers

Getting Young People Excited About Green Careers

Today about 150 teens from local high schools soaked up knowledge, inspiration and encouragement at the 5th Green Careers Conference.

We co-hosted the annual event at the SDG&E Energy Innovation Center with the nonprofit Strategic Energy Innovations, whose mission is to advance green communities through education and sustainability programs.

“We want to ignite their passions and show them the possibilities,” said Rebecca Aviles with SEI.

At the conference, students learned about aquaponics, coastline restoration, transportation electrification, biomimicry, energy policy, and much more. Sustainability professionals and industry leaders – including Len Hering, retired executive director of the Center for Sustainable Energy, and Mitch Mitchell, vice president of state government and external affairs at SDG&E – encouraged students to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM).

Go Forth and Pursue a Science Career

Hering urged teens in the audience to focus their education and their talents on finding solutions to the challenges posed by climate change. “You can’t be afraid of the science. You have to be excited to be part of the solution,” he said.

Mitchell told students that engineers and scientists are needed to help our region build a clean energy and clean transportation future.

Students Exhibiting their Enthusiasm for Sustainability

As part of the conference, students also presented their sustainability projects to their peers. High Tech High International students Deja Elison and Michelle Sen brought a compost bin to show how worms can help break down food waste to benefit the environment and enrich gardening soil.

Their classmates, Courtney Thoene and Lydia Ponomarenko, shared a short animation film that explains how climate change is threatening the survival of polar bears.

Learn More

The Green Careers Conference is one of several STEM educational efforts that SDG&E supports. To learn more about how we are helping to build the STEM ecosystem in our region, visit our Inspiring Future Leaders program web page.