Despite the current economic gloom, the green energy sector is looking towards a future of exponential growth. But how can we capitalise on this, if we can’t attract the necessary workforce?Tens of thousands of new jobs are expected to be created across Europe by the expansion of wind farms alone.
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Indeed, Lord Hunt, the UK’s Energy and Climate Minister, announced that up to 70,000 new jobs would be created in the wind industry just within the UK. Given these figures, the pan-European workforce will be huge.
And that’s just wind farms. Solar power, nuclear energy, wave power and many other emerging new technologies are climbing up the political agenda as new, carbon-free forms of energy are sought in a bid to combat climate change.
However it has already been widely recognised that the industry is suffering a skills shortage. So where are all the engineers and technical staff going to come from to man this rapidly-expanding industry?
