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Professionals · code 2143

Environmental engineers

AI can draft the impact assessment. Cleaning up a contaminated site is still engineering.

Researching and reporting on environmental impact is the one task AI could take a fair chunk of. Monitoring, collaborating and inspecting sites are mostly out of its reach.

What they actually do (and what else they get called)

Environmental engineers conduct research, advise on, design and direct implementation of solutions to prevent, control or remedy negative impacts of human activity on the environment utilizing a variety of engineering disciplines. They conduct environmental assessments of construction and civil engineering projects and apply engineering principles to pollution control, recycling and waste disposal. Tasks include - (a) conducting research, assessing and reporting on the environmental impact of existing and proposed construction, civil engineering and other activities; (b) inspecting industrial and municipal facilities and programmes to evaluate operational effectiveness and ensure compliance with environmental regulations; (c) designing and overseeing the development of systems, processes and equipment for control, management, or remediation of water, air or soil quality; (d) providing environmental engineering assistance in network analysis, regulatory analysis, and planning or reviewing database development; (e) obtaining, updating, and maintaining plans, permits, and standard operating procedures; (f) providing engineering and technical support for environmental remediation and litigation projects, including remediation system design and determination of regulatory applicability; (g) monitoring progress of environmental improvement programmes; (h) advising corporations and government agencies of procedures to follow in cleaning up contaminated sites to protect people and the environment; (i) collaborating with environmental scientists, planners, hazardous waste technicians, engineers from other disciplines, and specialists in law and business to address environmental problems. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Air pollution control engineer - Environmental analyst - Environmental engineer - Environmental remediation specialist - Wastewater process engineer Some related occupations classified elsewhere: - Environmental scientist - 2133 - Radiation protection expert - 2263

  • environmental engineer
  • environmental expert

Job titles from the EU's ESCO list. Search for any of them on the jobs page and you'll end up here.

62 / 100

Mostly holds up against AI

AI can take a few chores off your plate, but most of the day is still yours.

Not the odds you keep your job. It's how much of the everyday work still needs a person, out of 100.

← Robot's turf Human's turf →

The ILO's official verdict: Minimal Exposure

312 of 427 for holding up against AI

Why this score?

The ILO rated each of this job's 9 tasks for how much of it AI could do. They average 38.1 out of 100, so it holds up at 100 − 38.1 = 61.9.

That's the whole sum. No black box, no secret sauce: you can check it against the ILO's study. ILO group “Minimal Exposure”: A few tasks are affected, but the heart of the job isn't.

This job rates 29.2 out of 100 for how hands-on it is. The score above only looks at AI tools, not robots, but for work this far from the physical that matters less.

from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index data 0.8-observed-use

Man v Bot · compare

Who holds up better?

Environmental engineers 62

v

Go on, try your partner's job. Or your sibling's. We won't tell.

Man v Bot

Where the bot helps, and where the human wins

Bot

What AI takes

The routine stuff. You may not miss it.

  • Environmental impact reports.
  • Permits and procedures.
  • Monitoring and data analysis.

Man

What people still do better

Judgement, trust and skilled hands. Hard to download.

  • Designing remediation systems.
  • Inspecting sites and facilities.
  • Advising on risk.

Both

What's arriving

New work that only exists because the AI does.

  • Climate adaptation.
  • Carbon capture and removal.
  • Water scarcity projects.

Written by a human, from the ILO's task ratings below. Yes, we see the irony. Read it as one person's take.

Meet your two rivals

They're not the same machine. AI software can only reach the parts of a job done on a screen or in words. A chatbot can't climb a ladder. A robot might, one day, if it doesn't fall off.

The AI

Lives in a screen. Never had to fix a boiler.

Threat level: Low

33 could do without you

It could take over very little of the work on its own. It could help with 71 of 100.

The robot

The wildcard. Has hands, still working out stairs.

How much it matters here: Lower

29 how hands-on

Not much of this job needs hands, so the robot can sit this one out.

So could a robot do the physical part?

Less than half of this job is hands-on. Robots still matter, but for a smaller part of the work, so we don't sort it any further.

Robots hate fiddly work in awkward spaces. On that measure, this job scores 8 out of 100. The higher it is, the longer the robot waits.

29 How
hands-on
8 How fiddly
and cramped

Kind of hands-on work Less than half hands-on

The small print

They aren't a robot score, and nothing on this page is. Nobody measures how far robots have got well enough to put a number on it. These are the closest thing we have: how hands-on the job is, and how much fiddly, cramped work it takes, which is what Frey and Osborne found hardest for machines.

From O*NET, matched to one US job .

finger skill 5.4 · hand skill 0 · cramped spaces 18.8 · averaged · rule: hands-on under 50

estimated O*NET 31.0 BLS occupational crosswalk chain ISCO-08 to 2010 SOC (Aug 2012, rev. Jun 2015); 2010 to 2018 SOC (Nov 2017); O*NET-SOC 2019 taxonomy data 0.8-observed-use measures chosen by Frey & Osborne (2017) · the grouping is a sorting, not a measurement

The job, task by task

Every job is really a bundle of tasks. Here's this one unpacked, with how much of each AI could do, out of 100. The score is the average, and averages can hide a lot.

AI's favourite task here scores 51, against an average of 38. The bigger the gap, the more lopsided the job: some of it wide open to AI, some of it barely touched.

  1. 51

    Conducting research, assessing and reporting on the environmental impact of existing and proposed construction, civil engineering and other activities

    Medium
  2. 44

    Monitoring progress of environmental improvement programmes

    Low
  3. 41

    Providing environmental engineering assistance in network analysis, regulatory analysis, and planning or reviewing database development

    Low
  4. 39

    Designing and overseeing the development of systems, processes and equipment for control, management, or remediation of water, air, or soil quality

    Low
  5. 39

    Obtaining, updating, and maintaining plans, permits, and standard operating procedures

    Low
  6. 36

    Providing engineering and technical support for environmental remediation and litigation projects, including remediation system design and determination of regulatory applicability

    Low
  7. 35

    Advising corporations and government agencies of procedures to follow in cleaning up contaminated sites to protect people and the environment

    Low
  8. 34

    Collaborating with environmental scientists, planners, hazardous waste technicians, engineers from other disciplines and specialists in law and business to address environmental problems.

    Low
  9. 25

    Inspecting industrial and municipal facilities and programmes to evaluate operational effectiveness and ensure compliance with environmental regulations

    Low

9 tasks · the High to Very Low labels are the ILO's

from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index data 0.8-observed-use

Sidekick or replacement?

A tool that makes you faster is a very different thing from one that does the task while you watch. Jobs and Skills Australia measured the two separately, which is handy.

AI helps you
71
AI does it for you
33

Sidekick wins, by 38 points.

How good a match is this?

One Australian job matches this one closely, so this is about as reliable as it gets here.

estimated Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.8-observed-use matched to Australian jobs 2339

Meanwhile, in real life…

Everything else here is about what AI could do. This is what people actually did. When they asked Claude for help with this kind of work, did they hand the whole task over, or roll their sleeves up and work through it together?

Tiny sample alert This job makes up 0.03% of all the conversations: a tiny slice. People using AI for a job isn't the same as AI being able to do it.

Out of every 100 conversations

52
48

worked through it together handed it over

The small print

Anthropic publishes this about its own product, and it doesn't feed into any score here. These are people who use Claude, not workers in general, so little use here doesn't mean AI can't reach the job.

These two add up to 100. The bars elsewhere on the page don't, because each is scored on its own, so we don't put them side by side.

observed use Anthropic Economic Index release 2026-06-26, period beginning 2026-05-01 data 0.8-observed-use 2026-05-01 · Anthropic, about its own product

So, should environmental engineers be worried?

Short answer: not much. Some of the chores will change, and good riddance.

Parts of it are changing. Environmental impact reports are rated Medium; monitoring, analysis, design, permits, remediation support, advice, collaboration and inspections are Low. AI speeds up reports and modelling; site work and judgement stay human.

Worth remembering: we score tasks, not jobs. When AI takes on a task, the job usually reshuffles around it rather than vanishing.

Where this job could lead

None of the new jobs we've written up start from here yet. Could be you're the first. See the jobs AI is creating →

How are the neighbours doing?

There are 92 jobs in the “Professionals” family, averaging 61. This one is above the family average.

Pit this against any other job →