The move towards a net zero economy is rapidly picking up steam, and the world is now reaching the stage where demand often outstrips supply. Talk of the green skills gap – that is, the urgent need for highly skilled workers to work in the green economy – is becoming much more common, and the question of how we close the green skills gap is becoming the subject of focus and scrutiny.
The need is clear, and the numbers are worrying; a report last year from the MCS Charitable Foundation urged more focus on green apprenticeships to fill the need for “an influx of” 16-25-year-olds to work in the green sector, while industry body Solar Energy UK estimates that 60,000 people will be needed to meet the demand for solar panel installations by the 2030s.
Yet despite this pressing need, green skills training is simply not happening at the rate we need it to; a report commissioned by utility OVO Energy revealed that fewer than one in ten people receive any dedicated green skills training at work, despite one in five asking their employer for such training.
Barriers to increasing green skills training are numerous and complex, but one of them may be caused by a much more fundamental issue with the very nature of education itself. The traditional education structure, which has remained fundamentally unchanged since the Industrial Revolution, dictates that one attends school, then perhaps higher education, and then into a career that will stay broadly the same until your retirement.
That, says Oana Penu, director of the EIT InnoEnergy Skills Institute, an educational program working to close the green skills gap, is simply not how our world works anymore. With technology changing and shifting at such a rapid pace, a “tremendous” mindset shift must take place to encourage continuous learning throughout worker’s careers.
“We all need to understand that what we have learned in school becomes obsolete very fast. So lifelong learning, continuous learning: that is a tremendous opportunity,” says Oana.
“But it’s also a tremendous shift in the way the current workforce is thinking; I would almost say a key skill that everybody needs to have is to be open to and be aware that continuous learning must happen.”
Oana notes that the desire for continuous learning is, and must continue to, shift focus away from larger block module course structure and towards “nuggets” of learning content that one might carry out daily or weekly at times that suit the individual.
It’s a learning format that has seen success in other spheres, but could really shine more in technical sectors. Making continued education accessible, flexible and interesting is key; Oana notes that her company has an e-learning subscription with a major provider, but very few choose to take on the provided courses because they find them too time-consuming and uninteresting.
Additionally, Oana believes that technology isn’t being utilised to its full potential in the green skills sphere to enable this continuous learning. She points out that entire software suites exist for training doctors in a virtual environment, and adds that “to operate a factory or to install a solar panel is not as complicated as doing an operation, so I think it question of investing in these technologies and investing in this type of content.”
Oana proudly adds that the EIT InnoEnergy Skills Institute, through its Battery Academy, currently makes significant use of AR and VR technology, and Oana hopes to bring an AR suite to the recently launched Solar Skills Academy, which aims to upskill 65,000 workers across Europe over the next two years, in the near future.
Standardisation, quality, and global outreach
Another significant issue facing the industry is one of standardisation and qualifications. When dealing with complex technology with very specific requirements, the risks are high and the need for accuracy is paramount; as Oana puts it “if you don’t do things right, you get electrocuted and die”. The process of assessing worker competence and ensuring that everyone is trained to the needed standard is time consuming and necessitates repeating frequently as technology evolves.
Here, some progress is being made; the Global Wind Organisation (GWO) has launched a wide array of training program standards for wind turbine installers since 2012, and now, the Global Solar Council (GSC) is launching a similar programme. The Solar Training Standards Initiative (STSI), currently in development by GSC, is looking to bring the same concept to the solar industry.
“There’s a real issue in the PV industry where essentially we don’t have a global standard in terms of what training people need to go through before in order to build a solar farm,” says Sonia Dunlop, CEO of the Global Solar Council, a worldwide industry body for the solar power industry.
“That existed in wind, but not in solar, and so we’ve kicked off the GSTI to try and put in place exactly that system, copying what they’ve done in wind and replicating it for solar.”
One of the major successes of the GWO programme, and one that the GSC hope to focus on with the GSTI, is the ability to spread high quality, specialised training around the world, rather than focusing it in fewer global hubs that require prospective technicians to travel across the world for training.
“In wind, almost every single technician used to have to fly to Denmark to get their training done in order to build an onshore offshore wind farm wind farm. Now that the GWO system is in place, they can do that exact same training in training centres that are accredited and certified in Chile or in South Africa, or in Japan, or wherever they might be. So we want to try and make sure that we have the same system in place for solar PV,” says Sonia.
Expanding global options for standardised training has one significant upside; having highly trained workers spread across the world makes it easier to hire local people to work on projects. As Sonia notes, “politically, there is always value in being able to show that you’re employing local people to build local projects,” a fact that could well make it easier to get new renewable projects approved for development and off the ground.
Rethinking the definition of “green skills”
One interesting conundrum Oana raises is that the public understanding of what it means to work in the energy industry has not shifted as fast as the reality of the job. While many still hold onto the idea that a career in energy production means low-wage, blue-collar jobs, Oana notes that much of the industry, especially in manufacturing, focuses much more on computing and technical skills.
“A lot of the work that will be done in the future, especially in manufacturing, will be done by robots and will be automated work. So the work will not be how I’m going to manufacture solar panels, but how I’m going to teach my little robot to manufacture solar panels, and how do I understand when the robot or the machine tells me that something is wrong,” Oana says.
Oana says that campaigns with influencers to help educate young people on what jobs in energy manufacturing really entail have been making a positive impact, helping people to understand that “these type of jobs don’t mean being in a dark room and having your hands full of grease and being exposed to chemicals like it was in the past”, adding that “it is important that people understand that manufacturing today is a very clean, very high tech business and it is very lucrative.”
The scale of the issue, and the road ahead
While standardised training initiatives and rethinking how continuing education works are major steps forward and key parts of addressing the green skills gap, it is important to note the scale of the issue and how much more needs to be done.
Oana notes that the sheer scale of the problem is huge, and subject to several “crushing forces” of time, skills, volume of people and a changing workforce ideal: “huge, capacities need to be installed and for this huge capacity we need – very very fast -people that know what needs to be done. We don’t need just some people, we need big volumes of people.”
Of the STSI, Sonia is realistic about its scope, stating: “This initiative in itself is not going to necessarily deliver the six or seven million people that we need in order to install the PV out to the end of the decade. What it will do is make sure that they’re properly trained, that they have appropriate health and safety standards and training in order to keep them safe.
“We’ll minimise the number of Safety at Work incidents which, with solar, include a lot of really simple things like dehydration, heat stroke, that kind of thing, but also falls in trenches, power and equipment handling errors. It will make sure that the projects are being built to a more standard quality in terms of then how they operate once they’re commissioned.”
Despite the challenges, it is encouraging to see that across the world, steps are beginning to be taken to address our pressing need to upskill and reskill workers to deliver our green transition. While more needs to be done, and fundamental challenges need to be examined and addressed, the ongoing effort is a strong start that deserves celebrating.
