Australia will need more electricians and construction workers in the next seven years if it has any chance of building enough renewable energy sources to transform its National Electricity Market (NEM) by 2030.
The Labor government has set a target for 82 percent of its NEM to come from renewable sources and to reduce emissions by 43 percent.
To achieve this, the government commissioned Jobs and Skills Australia (JSA) to put together the report “The Clean Energy Generation: Workforce Needs for a Net Zero Economy,” which reveals the country will need an additional 32,000 electricians in the next seven years to achieve its goals.
Australia will also need 2 million workers in building and engineering trades by 2050 with the report noting that the country has insufficient capacity in its training and migration pipelines to meet the demand.
Strong growth is expected in occupations needed for clean energy, including electricians, metal fitters and machinists, and plant operators, which would likely be concentrated in regional Australia.
The call for a significant upgrade in skills and training to ensure workers can access expected job opportunities.
The construction sector is slated to generate around 450,000 jobs, almost one-third of all the employment growth over the period, and many of them to be based in New South Wales.
However, the report noted that Australia will face challenges in attracting skilled migrants and retaining local workers to compete with countries looking to transition their economies, secure energy supply, and develop new industries.
The report identified three priority areas of attention: system design; funding and program design; and student pipelines.
“Australia has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reshape our economy through a rejuvenated, harmonised approach to skilling. This means moving beyond coordination and collaboration and instead pursuing genuine partnerships within and among systems,” JSA Australia Acting Commissioner Peter Dawkins said.
“The clean energy workforce could be a unique testbed to explore innovative models of education and training and should be used to the fullest.”
Lobby Groups Welcome Report, Commit to Collaboration
The Clean Energy Council said that it is looking forward to cooperating with JSA and other Commonwealth departments and agencies to build out the workforce needed for the industry, particularly in engineering and electrical fields.“The next seven years will be critical in establishing or strengthening the education, training, and migration systems to ensure that we have the workforce to deliver the energy transition,” Anita Talberg, Clean Energy Council Director of Workforce Development, said.
Australian Industry (Ai) Group and the Business Council of Australia (BCA) also expressed a commitment to continue their collaboration with the government and said they support the call for more training and education to give rise to more qualified people.
“Ai Group has long called for a better-connected tertiary system that suits today’s workforce skill needs and is pleased the report advocates for a ’more joined up' tertiary education system (VET and higher education). Along with migration systems reform, VET and higher education are seen as the key enablers to achieve a national skills system that effectively and flexibly responds to skills and workforce needs,” said Ai Group CEO Innes Willox.
“What is crucial now is that we take these findings and put them into action. We need a skills system that thinks big if we want to build new industries and grow the economy—and new skills will get us there. The Business Council looks forward to continuing this collaboration to ensure we have the skills we need to grow our future industries,” BCA CEO Bran Black said.
