Staffing crisis 'will hit green energy targets'

Published Date: 14 September 2008
By Nathalie Thomas

SCOTLAND's renewables sector is facing a severe staffing crisis which will throw Government targets on green energy into disarray, industry experts are warning.
Renewable energy companies have raised the alarm over a chronic shortage of engineers and other staff with enough training to man Scotland's growing army of wind farms, hydroelectric power stations and biomass plants. Industry experts say up to 40% of jobs at some renewables firms are currently unfilled and Scotland will not meet its target of generating half its electricity from renewable sources by 2020 if the Government does not urgently address the problem.With the industry expected to mushroom over the next 12 years, a report from the British Wind Energy Association next month is expected to warn of a grave threat to the future of the industry. Sector specialists are calling on the Government to invest in more specialised training programmes or risk missing its 2020 ambition.Henning von Barsewisch, managing director of RePower UK, an Edinburgh-based firm which manufactures wind turbines, said recruitment is currently acting as a bottleneck in the industry, and in some cases it has taken up to year to recruit people even for sales roles. He warned the problem is only likely to get worse in the run-up to 2020 as the renewables workforce balloons. "We won't be able to achieve the targets because we can't find the people," he said.David Cameron, chief technical officer at the Scottish Renewables Forum, the trade body for the renewables industry north of the border, said a recent survey of members had highlighted recruitment as one of the biggest barriers to the sector's development, along with Scotland's grid and planning constraints.He pointed out that many training schemes will be too late for the 2020 target. Careers Scotland's 'The Path is Green' course raises awareness of green energy jobs among schools but it can take 12 years before the students are ready to enter the workplace, he argued. "It's a shame we didn't start this 10 years ago," he added.The warning over recruitment follows a sharp wake-up call from Robert Armour, of British Energy, who said the Government will need to built a new generation of conventional power stations before 2025 if it wants to avoid importing electricity.At a conference on Scotland's energy future last Tuesday, fears were also raised over the "woeful" state of the Scottish grid system, which industry experts say will need to be "turned on its head" if electricity generated at remote wind and tidal facilities is to be transported to the rest of the country.