Renewable energy is booming, and that means many new jobs are being created, replacing those lost as fossil fuel related employment falls. However, it is not a seamless transition. Though some of the skills involved with building and operating renewable energy systems are like those that some people already have, not all of them are the same. Some new green energy techs need people with specialist skills & some of these may be in short supply.
There have been several studies of the issues, including one by Economist Impact, as I noted in an earlier post. It’s quite comprehensive, looking at the state of play globally and at what industry and others can do to improve the situation.
Certainly there are problems. A new report from LinkedIn, warns that demand for green talent increased by 11.6% between 2023 and 2024, compared to just a 5.6% rise in available talent. Looking forward, it said that Gen Z, which will comprise one-third of the workforce by 2030, were showing strong interest in green careers, with 61% wanting to work in green jobs within the next five years. But at the current pace, it says only 1 in 10 will be equipped with the necessary skills. And, according to the report, only one in 10 women currently have a green skill, compared to nearly one in five men. Clearly something has to change. As Edies puts it in a useful review, ‘global demand for green talent is growing twice as fast as supply, so, by 2050, half of the jobs in the green economy may remain unfilled, jeopardising the delivery of climate goals’.
In its response, LinkedIn called on governments to put investments in green upskilling at the heart of their energy and climate policy. For example it suggested that countries should include plans for building a climate-ready workforce in their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement.
Drawing on these and other recent studies, including earlier commentaries in Renew, a new NATTA report looks at what might be done. It says that while the education system will play a role in increasing skills and raising awareness of green career paths, industry must also play a major role, for example via apprenticeship schemes and in-house training. Government can also help by proving support for training. Indeed, government strategic planning could include skill training requirements as a key factor in overall energy policy development. Moreover, this report goes further and suggests that government should play a more strategic role, by formally requiring companies to provide the necessary training to be eligible for state funding of renewable projects.
So, as well as looking at green skill gaps and their possible impacts, the report also looks at the issues involved in trying to integrate green skills development into green energy expansion programmes, within the wider context of the ‘just transition’, helping regions & communities to meet the challenges of the changing energy sector, and in particular the need for ‘levelling up’ via social and economic policies to reduce local and regional economic inequalities.
It admits that the transition will not be easy in some cases, for example in areas already suffering from depravation. It can also be hard to phase out a well-established industry. But it may be possible to make a technological shift to uplift the region, with new companies attracted to the area, leading to a transformation of its economy in a policy-led transition. Though there may then be a need for accompanying policies that strengthen the social dimension, change models that ensure that growth is socially inclusive, and that create a positive outlook by creating new jobs, and more money for upskilling and reskilling. There will also be a need for better prediction of the skills needed to enable people to move to new opportunities via retraining if needed. There may also be a need for increased welfare, like affordable housing in impacted areas to alleviate social and economic costs. All in all, the social side is likely to be even more challenging than the technical side. But, the report says, both will be needed for a full, fair, and effective transition.
However, looking on the positive side, the transition is good news for those who already have green skills. As the LinkedIn report notes, jobseekers with green skills are seeing a 54.6% higher hiring rate than the workforce average globally. In the lead is the USA with an 80.3% rate, with globally, as you would expect, the power utilities sector leading in green job postings, with 23.1% of roles requiring sustainability expertise, due to the rapid renewable energy expansion. Construction, which contributes 37% to global emissions, ranks second with 20.6% of job postings needing green skills, as the industry prepares for increased climate-related investments. So, some progress is being made across the board. But clearly, as the renewables boom continues and other reactions to climate change expand, the need for enhanced green job supply and skills training will be even greater.
In the UK, the House of Commons Energy Security and Net Zero Select Committee will hopefully be looking at green skill gap issues as part of its review of how the government could prepare the energy sector’s workforce to meet its 2030 grid decarbonisation targets. The new Government has also established an Office for Clean Energy jobs and is set to launch a new 10-year industrial strategy in early 2025. But it is getting urgent. As Edies noted ‘there has notably been no comprehensive update to the UK’s overarching skills strategy since net-zero by 2050 was enshrined in law in 2019’.
The new NATTA report is by Terry Cook and David Elliott, Open University
Free access scroll to ‘NATTA reports’ at https://renewnatta.wordpress.com/
It was initially planned to summit this paper to an academic journal, but increasingly scholastic publishers are charging fees for submissions, in some cases several thousands of pounds/dollars per paper, so that they can be free to access by readers. The risk then is that only well off/corporately-backed authors can afford to submit. By contrast, NATTA’s material (mostly generated within/by NATTA/Renew) is, at least at present, free to all, authors and readers- and is fast. The down side is that it’s not (externally) peer reviewed - but that takes time, several months for most journals. Direct access: https://renewnatta.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/green-skills-gap.pdf
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