Insight: How do we build the workforce needed for net zero?

Speeches by two Secretaries of State this week have underlined the centrality of tackling the climate crisis to the Government’s agenda. One aspect of this agenda is ensuring we develop the good jobs needed to meet the country’s net zero energy needs. Reed Environment Director, Tom Hoines sets out his thoughts.

The Government has placed added emphasis on its policies to realise net zero. In a speech at Kew Gardens at the beginning of the week, Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, described the climate crisis as a bigger global threat than terrorism. On the same day, Energy Secretary, Ed Miliband, positioned net zero as central to the Government’s growth mission, presenting ‘a chance to create hundreds of thousands of good jobs and drive investment into all parts of the UK’.

So, if the Government is prioritising building the green economy and combating climate change, how do we, as the business community, play our part? One answer has to be through contributing to the development of the jobs that will allow net zero to be achieved. We will be discussing this in-depth at the upcoming Labour Party Conference with an expert panel. In advance, here are my thoughts on where the focus should lie.

1. Green skills are trade skills. To be sure, there are many system-transformation and transferable skills that will be needed to support the transition, from coalition building to problem solving. But you could argue that these are key to any type of major economic transformation. Alongside engineers and scientists, most of the technical and practical workers needed in large numbers are in the trades. With the demographic challenge of older workers leaving the sector combined with persistent skills shortages, building the trades pipeline must be prioritised.
2. Small business is key. Skills strategies, support and funding need to be designed with small and micro firms at their centre, not as an afterthought. Not only do 5.5 million of the 5.6 million private sector businesses in the UK employ fewer than 50 people, but the share is far higher for the trades firms key to net zero delivery. For example, in construction, only 13% of employees work for large firms, compared to 52% in retail or 71% in finance. Interventions to train up more in the trades won’t work if they don’t work for small and micro firms. On this issue, we are pleased to be supporting the Social Market Foundation with a project looking at how we support more trades SMEs to take on school-leaver apprentices, collaborating with Trustmark, the government-endorsed quality scheme for tradespeople working in or around the home.
3. We need to better align skills funding and provision to employer need. Not a new point, but one that the net zero workforce challenge makes urgent and specific. For example, funding for courses that need a set number of hours to be delivered in a short period of time make it difficult for a tradesperson to get time off to attend. The entire system is fragmented and difficult for people and firms to work with. The forthcoming Growth and Skills levy and the new role of Skills England present opportunities to keep it simple and create the flexibility to meet current and emerging employer needs.

These are big challenges but it’s an exciting time as we move from talking about ‘green jobs’ to building recruitment and reskilling routes for specific roles and sectors. As Sue Ferns, Senior Deputy General Secretary at Prospect, wrote: ‘Talk of green jobs isn’t enough. We need to explain what they are: solar panel installers, wind turbine engineers, insulation manufacturers and installers'.

Andrew Pakes MP, Co-Chair of the APPG on Apprenticeships has also written recently about the importance of spreading green collar job opportunities across the country, citing what is happening in his own Peterborough constituency where the college is ‘building a new Centre for Green Technology to deliver green apprenticeships in areas like heat pump installation, energy efficiency and electric vehicle infrastructure’.

Both Sue and Andrew will be joining me at our fringe event with IPPR on Monday 23 September. If you are in Liverpool for Labour Conference, you would be very welcome to join the conversation!