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Renewable-energy skills, education and training

The Skills Summit, held at the British Wind Energy Association’s annual conference earlier this year, saw the launch of a “Wind and Renewables Skills Sector Accord”, which is hoped to encourage companies in the sector to take on apprentices to help reach government renewables targets, with the aim of training up to 60,000 new technicians and engineers.

There have certainly been a lot of pronouncements about the large number of jobs that could be created by the expansion of renewable energy in the UK – perhaps even matching the 250,000 so far created in Germany. Equally though there have been concerns about skill shortages – and the need for more and better educational and training provisions.

There is a range of initiatives at various levels. Some are part of more general schemes. The new Skills Funding Agency (SFA), which becomes operational in April 2010, is the successor to the Learning Skills Council and it plans to focus “exclusively on adult skills and working with colleges, skills providers and employers to identify needs”. The government will play a facilitating role, offering two brokerage services, one for SMEs and one for larger employers; and schemes such as “Train to Gain” and the National Apprenticeship Service. All of these include the aim of enabling employers to adapt to the low-carbon economy and training a workforce competent for its new demands.

More specifically, the Department for Business Innovation and Skills has announced plans to create about 1,500 graduate placements to help support marine renewable energy, while Gordon Brown has talked of a new £10 m “green internship” scheme for young people.

In the East Midlands, the Regional Development Agency (emda) is piloting a “Skills4Energy” programme designed to ensure appropriate support is available for Further Education colleges and skills providers to provide suitable training within the region in energy technologies. For more details. Visit www.skills4energy.com.

Meanwhile, British Gas is working with the Welsh Assembly to create the first dedicated environmental-skills training centre in Tredegar, and to provide more than 1,300 people a year with skills, such as installing solar panels. Most of the money to start the centre will come from the European contingency fund.

Universities are of course also trying to do there bit, with courses on sustainable energy and allied topics at both degree and postgraduate level, as well as short courses on specialist topics. One of the first and largest is the BSc in renewable energy, run by the University of Exeter in Cornwall at its Falmouth site. The University of Dundee, De Montford University and Glyndwr University also run undergraduate degrees in renewables/green energy, while Cornwall College offers a foundation degree in renewable energy.

The Open University offers a range of distance learning courses in the area, including its pioneering one-year sustainable-energy course (T206), which attracts around 500 students each year. For a “taster”, visit www.open.ac.uk/T206/index.htm.

The market for Masters seems quite buoyant, with most major universities now running courses in sustainable-energy engineering or similar topics – perhaps the most well known being the CREST MSc at Loughborough.

It is clearly an expanding field – but the key issue is whether the education expansion is sufficient to meet the growing need for people with the right skills, at the right level. While people with professional science and engineering backgrounds are obviously always going to be central, people with vocational/technical qualifications are also urgently needed. It may also be that people with skills at various levels in the financial, management and planning areas are equally important. Project management and the ability to deal with environmental-assessment issues, planning conflicts and social outreach issues may be just as important to success as basic mechanical or electrical engineering. Some would say that policy-development issues and strategic-development studies are also important, given the need to push ahead with the UK’s ambitious low-carbon transition programme. Overall it will be quite a challenge to meet this wide range of requirements.

For a list of courses, visit www.reuk.co.uk/UK-Renewable-Energy-Degree-Courses.htm.

Mention should perhaps also be made of the parallel initiatives on nuclear power. For example, the Open University and the National Skills Academy for Nuclear has secured funding from the North West Higher Level Skills Partnership to develop a certificate in nuclear professionalism, which aims to aid “the transition into the nuclear industry for recent graduates and experienced personnel transferring into the sector”.

The certificate will be a modular framework, alongside a small element of scientific-skills development, with a particular focus on “providing the behavioural, commercial and project-management skills” that are seen as important to the nuclear sector.

If we are going to have a new nuclear programme, then it will be important that it is properly managed, so courses like this will be necessary. However, there is the problem that there may not be enough skilled people and training courses for them, to support both renewables and nuclear.

For more details, visit www.nuclear.nsacademy.co.uk.

Posted by Dave Elliott on November 21, 2009 12:51 PM | Permalink