Addressing the skills gap will be crucial to accelerating Australia’s clean energy transition, writes Clean Energy Council chief executive Kane Thornton.
The Australian clean energy sector is preparing for a period of extraordinary growth and development as we accelerate towards a fully clean energy power system. Australia is now on a path to becoming a clean energy superpower.
The amount of clean energy we need and can deploy during the coming decades is genuinely eye-watering.
The latest Integrated System Plan by the Australian Energy Market Operator outlines the case for an eightfold increase, building 141GW of large-scale wind and solar capacity, 63GW of storage and hydro capacity, and 69GW of small-scale solar and household batteries by 2050.
The election of the Albanese Government has put renewable energy at the centre of efforts to combat climate change and is part of the vision for Australia’s economic future. The strong and clear policy signals provide clean energy investors with the policy certainty they have long been crying out for.
Delivering this transformation will require an enormous number of workers with the right skills in the right locations. This presents a huge opportunity during a time when even the current demand for clean energy workers is going unmet.
With the skills gap already putting significant pressure on clean energy projects, urgent action is required to ensure the workers who will build the massive amounts of new renewable energy capacity required in the next two decades are trained and ready for their leading role in Australia’s clean energy transition.
Skills shortages already having an impact
The clean energy industry currently employs approximately 30,000 people across both the large- and small-scale sectors. However, the current project pipeline indicates that at least an additional 50,000 jobs will be needed during the next two decades for Australia to decarbonise its electricity sector.
The clean energy industry is currently experiencing serious shortages of engineers and electricians, which are crucial to constructing new large-scale projects and the rooftop solar sector. However, the skills gap is being increasingly felt at all levels across the industry, ranging from degreed professionals to those working in trade and technician-based roles.
Unfortunately, there is no quick fix to the problem. Instead, it will take careful planning and a concerted and coordinated effort by governments, education and training providers, and clean energy employers to ensure the right structures are put in place to ease the current skills gap and provide the industry with the flow of skilled workers required to meet its growing needs.
Structural change needed to achieve long-term goals
The Clean Energy Council recently released “Skilling the Energy Transition”, a report that examines the key reasons for the current skills shortages in the clean energy industry and outlines several solutions to address them.
The report examines some of the major reasons for the current skills shortage and provides six key recommendations, which can be broken down into three broad areas:
·The visibility of clean energy careers must be increased.
·Education and training must align better with the needs of the clean energy sector.
·There is a significant opportunity to transition workers from fossil fuel industries and attract international workers and students to fill skills gaps.
Rather than offering short-term solutions that fail to address the underlying causes, the report’s recommendations propose long-term structural changes across the entire clean energy employment ecosystem. These range from rethinking higher education funding models, better understanding and recognising international qualifications and experience, and improving visa processes.
The recommendations are designed to put the right structures in place now to ensure the workforce can be rapidly scaled up as the clean energy transition accelerates.
These reforms aren’t simple, however the Federal Government’s recent focus on skills and employment through its Jobs and Skills Summit shows a wider recognition of the challenges and a strong desire to solve them.
First steps towards a stronger workforce
While the skills shortages in the clean energy industry may be news to some, the industry itself has been sounding the alarm for quite a while. During the past two years, the Clean Energy Council has been working closely with its members on solutions to the growing skills gap, with “Skilling the Energy Transition” the culmination of much of this work.
These recommendations are just one small part of the Clean Energy Council’s efforts to address the industry’s workforce challenges. In recent years, the Clean Energy Council has released a series of studies, including “Clean Energy at Work” and “Empowering Everyone: Diversity in the Australian Clean Energy Sector”, to better understand the makeup of the industry’s workforce.
The Clean Energy Council has also been active in advocating for skills and training reforms, including the establishment of the Australian Energy Employment Report to provide a holistic view of energy jobs across the entire sector, and the update of electrical training units to better meet the needs of the clean energy industry.
The Clean Energy Council also recently launched the Clean Energy Careers Guide, which provides a comprehensive overview of the roles and careers that exist in the Australian renewable energy industry, and the steps that prospective workers need to take to pursue them.
When combined with the Clean Energy Careers Hub – a jobs board for employers to advertise, and for job seekers to find clean energy jobs – the Clean Energy Careers Guide will help to increase the visibility of careers in clean energy, and provides a great starting point for people looking to begin their clean energy careers.
Whether we like it or not, Australia is in a race against the clock to replace our ageing and increasingly unreliable coal-fired generation with renewable energy. The skills gap is already beginning to bite. If left unchecked, it could jeopardise Australia’s clean energy transition and squander the considerable opportunity to transform our economy into one of the world’s foremost exporters of renewable energy.
However, if we put in place the required changes now, we can set ourselves up to meet our clean energy goals while providing fulfilling and stable careers for thousands of Australian workers.
