Insight
The Optimat team attended the All-Energy conference at the Glasgow SEC on 15th May, a vibrant event that explored various aspects of the energy mix, including wind, solar, bioenergy, and the rapidly emerging sectors of hydrogen and tidal energy. The conference also featured prominent thought-leaders from the hydropower, grid, cleantech, and heat transition sectors.
Bringing our extensive experience in net zero, Optimat’s team – Iain Weir, Deborah Creamer, Mark Morrison, Jordan Stodart, and Jolanta Beinaroviƒça – engaged with attendees and exhibitors in the thriving all-energy mix. As a company deeply embedded in the UK’s net zero ecosystem, our participation underscores our commitment to advancing decarbonisation through policy research, economic modelling, stakeholder engagement, and actionable insight generation.
A significant focus of the event was on the skills and training necessary to facilitate the sector’s expansion and ongoing decarbonisation. Among the highlights was a mobile heat pump maintenance training unit, designed to upskill the technical workforce in remote and rural areas of Scotland. In line with this theme, we presented two studies commissioned by the Scottish Government through ClimateXChange on the first day of the conference. The research focused on the skills and workforce needs of the solar and onshore wind industries, projecting requirements to 2030. For these skills studies, we developed a bespoke modelling approach that is not only capable of predicting the overall workforce demand, but also provides a more granular breakdown into job roles and, subsequently, skills that will be required by the industry as it is working towards the installed capacity ambitions.
Our senior consultant, Mark Morrison, who led the onshore wind industry skills study, commented: ‚ ‘It was fantastic to see the level of interest in onshore wind – standing room only in the theatre. That is no surprise as the ambition to install 20 GW by 2030 from around 9.8 GW today will require the workforce to almost triple in size. There will be significant demand for technical specialists including high voltage engineers and wind turbine technicians, as well as a construction force to build the wind farms. Most of this will take place in rural locations, in particular Highland and Dumfries & Galloway, offering local people well-paid and highly skilled jobs as part of the Just Transition‚Äù.
Emphasising the importance of systems thinking in developing the future energy workforce, our director and senior consultant Deborah Creamer, who led the solar industry skills study, remarked: ‚ ‘There is going to be high demand for particular job roles to enable Scotland to achieve a proposed ambition of 6 GW installed PV capacity by 2030. This will include electrical specialists, such as electricians, electrical engineers and grid engineers, as well as civil and construction workers. But these roles are already in high demand in other parts of the renewable energy sector as well as in other industries, such as house-building. A strong message from the solar industry skills study is that there is a need for a collaborative, cross-sectoral approach to addressing the skills shortages that already exist to ensure that Scotland is in a position to meet its net zero targets in the future.‚Äù
These studies are instrumental in supporting the Onshore Wind Sector Deal and Scotland’s Energy Strategy and Just Transition plan. The onshore wind skills and workforce requirement research report is available for download on the ClimateXChange website: here. The solar skills and workforce requirements research report is expected to be published in 2-3 weeks, time and will also be available on the ClimateXChange website.