The Green Edge Reports Roundup, Oct-24: Part Two - Sectors
Continuing with our selection of reports and other publications from this month’s reading list.
Part Two of our crop of green reports from this months reading list. Also see Part One - General.
֎ Reports we feel are particularly worth a look.
Energy
General
More and more and more: An all-consuming history of energy
Jean Baptiste Fressoz, Allen Lane, October 2024.
A delightful book which really challenges what we read in the IEA annual reviews of energy and the whole energy transition. The challenge? We are burning more wood, coal, oil and gas than ever before. For example, around 2bn cubic meters of wood are felled each year for burning which is three times the level of 100 years ago. Even in a country like the USA, there is twice as much wood burned now than in the 1960s. This is all uncomfortable and makes for difficult reading when the overall narrative is that fossil fuels are on the decline.
Protecting the UK from a future energy crisis
Energy Crisis Commission, October 2024.
Leaving the net zero challenges aside, there are plenty of others impacting (or potentially) the current energy system that need addressing. What isn’t clear to us is the cross-over between resolving factors impacting the current energy system and the transition to net zero, and how an energy system based on renewables is more resilient and less open to world events.
Renewables
Renewable Energy and Jobs: Annual Review 2024
IRENA, October 2024.
Covers the 13 main renewable energy sub-sectors, and based on employment only solar is by far the biggest employer (at 7.1mn) followed by biofuels (2.8mn), hydropower (2.3mn), and then, wind with 1.457mn. It says we know the whole of the renewable energy work activities are defined and well-practised which means we know the curriculum we need to have available across the world. The UK is featured (pages 58-59). Lots of jobs are being generated across the world and opportunities are emerging for follow-on services and expertise.
Renewables 2024: Analysis and forecast to 2030
IEA, October 2024.
A reassuring pattern here: all growth! By far the biggest drivers are Solar PV and China followed by the growth across the EU, USA and India. This is good news for investment, costs and prices which will help all countries.
Solar
EU Solar Jobs Report 2024: A solar workforce ready for stronger growth
Solar Power Europe, September 2024.
Sadly UK is not covered in this report (EU only) but there are some fascinating facts in here: total solar employment in the EU is now 826,000 of which 87% is for installation. It also covers and lists key jobs, key ratios, and highlights the value of skills migration i.e. solar workers can move around the EU as demand for deployment shifts from place to place, and makes good use of refined skill sets.
Rewarding and Incentivising Nature – inclusive solar through EU policy: Policy Paper
Metabolic for The Nature Conservancy and Solar Power Europe, October 2024.
With the shift in policy in the UK on combining nature/agriculture with solar installations, this paper might be helpful. Shows to us the breadth of skills required when developing largescale onshore renewable projects.
Transmission / Grid
Globsec Grid Transition Index 2024
Globsec, October 2024.
A 35-country study with the results shown as a map (pages 7 and 14) and full numeric results (page 67). The UK is featured (full facts page 50) and is shown to be substantially prepared which is an interesting statement against the grid connection times currently being quoted. Suggests there is much to share and learn across Europe as the transition progresses.
Building grids faster: the backbone of the energy transition
Energy Transition Commission, September 2024.
While US-focused, skills are identified as a barrier to the expansion and realignment of the grid, and this is a recurrent theme across all developed and developing economies. Not too many solutions offered though as the skills needed are well known and defined, and we start to come to the conclusion there will have to be a mandated shifting of talent as the market is not making the inflow of talent to take place.
Enabling sustainable electrification of the economy
HC 278 Environmental Audit Committee, House of Commons, May 2024.
Covers skills (pages 28-29) and comes to a very simple conclusion: little progress since EAC’s last report into green jobs (October 2021). The recommendations are equally simple: we need a workforce plan, and we need it now. Hopefully, the emergence of Skills England and the setting up of the Office for Clean Energy Jobs should start to address many of the issues raised here.
Heat & Retrofit
֎Skills for an integrated and customer focussed retrofit process: A foresighting project
Gatsby sponsored with the Energy Systems Catapult, 2023.
A great chart in this report shows the unmatched skills across the retrofit process (Figure 4, page 7), and goes beyond the usual general skills statements. Now that the skills analysis across the whole retrofitting is now complete, we need to see demand for education and training to follow the moves to boost the installation of heat pumps.
Get a heat pump
Nesta and others, updated Oct 2024.
This is a great educational and awareness-raising website which captures most of what anyone would want to know about heat pumps. It is a resource for installers, for consumers, for educators, and others. Hopefully we will see all building decarbonisation and retrofitting organisations, green and retrofit skills hubs, and others make use of this resource.
Heat Pumps on Subscription
Presentation by LCP Data to UKERC-Climate X Change conference on Understanding Scotland’s Energy Transition, October 2024.
A good set of papers of which we pick out one seeking to tackle the financial barriers to heat pump adoption—the role of subscription (possibly taking heat as a service and heat pumps being leased). As the current grant schemes are capped there is a need to find an alternative approach to scale the levels and rate of heat pump installations. We would expect either the energy companies or the major heat pump manufacturers to devise a number of financial alternatives possibly as a whole retrofit bundle.
Future Home Savings: Modelling the running costs of new homes with renewables
MCS Foundation, September 2024.
Little by little the myths around heat pumps are being dismissed, and this report is another helpful input into this and hopefully will be used by those promoting and selling heat pumps. Spoiler alert: heat pumps make good economic and net zero sense.
Train local, work local, stay local: Retrofit, growth and levelling-up
IPPR, September 2022.
A report whose time might have come with a new government and the setting up of Skills England and the Office for Clean Energy Jobs. Having a dedicated, multi-year fund to support high quality (standards based) retrofit education and training for upskilling and reskilling makes sense alongside skills passports (well developed for the North Sea Transition). Time for an update and a reprint!
Agriculture, Nature & Food
State of Natural Capital Report for England 2024 – risks to nature and why it matters (NERR 137)
Natural England, October 2024.
A real wealth of materials here, and we were drawn to the Natural Capital Risk Register which directs our thinking to risk mitigation and management, which in turn drive actions and that requires skills. It would be good to see the various skills experts across government using this report to tease out the skills and workforce implications. In doing this work, it would be worth drawing on the work of Nature Scotland that identified 86 distinct roles involved the agriculture transition. A recommended read alongside the WWF’s Living Planet Report - A system in peril (October 2024) to put England into a global context.
Biodiversity loss and nature recovery
POST, October 2024.
Part of POST’s horizon-scanning work looking at emerging policy issues for the next 5 years. A few frequently used words around policy emerge from reading this: co-ordination, coherency, data, and methods/approaches i.e. all about delivery against targets in a robust way. Progress across biodiversity and nature recovery has significant work implications and therefore for skills. Perhaps Skills England will publish the Net Zero and Nature Workforce Plan drafted by the Green Jobs Delivery Group? We understand this will happen and we’re being patient for now!
Nature is now: A guide for business to act on nature
WWF and Deloitte Netherlands, September 2024.
An excellent and thorough report with clear guidance and strong indications around skills and knowledge gaps. Includes a good series of tools, techniques and databases.
The Economics of Water: Valuing the Hydrological Cycle as a Global Common Good
Global Commission on the Economics of Water, October 2024.
A powerful and exhaustive report timed for the COP16 on Biodiversity in Columbia. Directly takes us into a series of key actions (missions). While skills do not get much of mention (we found only one), there are multiple skills implications arising from the proposed actions. We also found it useful in that it places water at the centre of the transition to net zero and a sustainable future.
Unlocking the economic power of natural capital solutions
Smart Prosperity Institute and Nature United, October 2024.
Based on analysis of options and approaches in Canada, this report is accessible and uses excellent infographics. By default it shows the range of capabilities needed to fully capitalise on natural capital solutions.
Arla Foods on-farm labour market survey: Spring 2024
Arla Foods, September 2024.
While there is much talk about high demand and critical jobs across the UK economy, there remains a major challenge to adequately staff farms to allow them to function at a basic level. This survey covers nearly 500 farms and provides a detailed view of the issues they are facing. One message that comes through clearly from this survey is the misconception of what roles are developing with farming and farm management e.g. around AI, data analytics, robotics, automation etc. As waves of technologies cut across sectors and jobs, new, refashioned roles are emerging which are quite different from the traditional roles that have existed for centuries.
Leading the transformation of the UK food system from the Midlands
Midlands Engine, February 2024.
While energy gets the headlines when net zero is raised, agriculture, food and nature tend to often get missed around the whole agriculture transition, land use change, and repositioning of farming (e.g. ELMs/Sustainability payments). This report covers the whole of the Midlands from Lincolnshire across to Herefordshire and shows the scale of the whole food system and its potential for further growth. The food sector has multiple waves of change working across it from regulatory, societal expectations, technology (AI and data are major drivers), before getting into the emission reduction challenges.
Automotive
Electrifying Growth: Exploring what electrification could mean for the UK’s automotive industry
CBI Economics for the ECIU, October 2024.
Embracing EV manufacturing has a huge prize for the UK economy, and in the four scenarios presented here (page 10) the differences between the worst and best cases are huge. There are hundreds of thousands of jobs at stake (Figure 22, page 32). The geography of this shift (up or down) is huge, and we have to remember that the skills for automotive cross over into many other sectors, and its scale drives the skills development for other sectors.
Circular Economy
The Rise of Community Repair: The people and the data creating a movement
Open Repair Alliance, October 2024.
The development of the circular economy is seeing the leading and major role of voluntary groups and charities e.g. handling food waste and food poverty (like the Felix Project), and here we see the rapidly developing sector of “repair cafes”. Given the stock of stuff across society there is a huge backlog of repairs, but with the “right to repair” legislation the role of the third sector might decline. We also should add that there is a large professional and commercial repair sector. The whole repair and re-use sector is one which is forecast to grow strongly over the coming years, and that brings with it a need for skills—often legacy skills—across the repair workforce.
Recycling Roadmap 2nd Edition
British Plastics Federation with RECOUP, October 2024.
An update of the 2021 roadmap, showing the rate and breadth of progress over the last 3 years. Just consider the skills intensity required across the supply chain to drive the changes charted here.
DEFRA Resources and Waste Reform Roadmap to 2025
DEFRA, August 2024.
Covers four areas: extended producer responsibility; simplifying recycling; digital waste tracking; and deposit return schemes. Each development requires a ripple of change across a complex set of actions in the whole recycling and waste management system.
Recycling Tracker Survey in the UK Spring 2024: Citizen insights on behaviours, attitudes and awareness around recycling in the UK
WRAP, October 2024.
Reports on a large-scale survey (5,438 citizens), now in its 20th year, shows the importance of the role of local authorities in boosting both recycling rates and effective recycling (correct allocation). This is important area in tracking how citizens engage everyday in a core aspect of the circular economy.
Data Explorer Gamagori: A circular job analysis of Gamagori, Japan
Circle Economy, October 2024.
A report for an online data explorer of the overall circular jobs currently in place (direct and indirect), and then split across the five main sectors: services, manufacturing, built environment, agrifood, and utilities. Big message for us is the opportunities for further growth here and using employment as a way of tracking progress. There are similar projects in the UK e.g. London which released a jobs report recently (which we have listed before).
The Circularity Gap Report Quebec
Circle Economy and Recyc Quebec, 2021 (updated)
These city-based reports are very insightful but this one doesn’t show Quebec in the best light. The clear circle economy element of Quebec is only 3.5% leaving a huge opportunity for improvement. Many of these opportunities become clear when we look at the X-Ray of Quebec’s Economy which shows the flows from material and resource intake and extraction through taking, processing, producing, and then into provision and outputs. Looking at the process flow (mass balance) diagram we can see the skills needs leaping out. It shows the value of a great infographic.
Construction & Housing
֎Adopting Manufacturing Led Construction
Workforce Foresighting Hub (Innovate UK) in collaboration with the MTC, September 2024.
While this report is as much about the approach and the method, the contents are well worth reading in detail. Here we see a process that brings together industry, skills and technology partners to generate future occupational profiles. These profiles were then compared to the existing standards to establish their degree of suitability. The level of match between current and future standards was low (3 of 23). There is an element here of future demands and future options driving a revised view of skills required i.e. future build requirements means finding a new approach to delivery. A series of visualisations are used here and we think these could be used to boost engagement and collaboration with employers.
Building a sustainable workforce: Greening the built environment. A report and market map.
Brighteye Ventures with Ufi Ventures, July 2024.
This report makes a challenging statement: “a number of roles are necessary to enable the greening of the built environment, but the true scale is tough to determine – there is limited visibility on skills projections.” We can’t agree with that: there are multiple projections from CITB, the Climate Change Committee, and many academic studies. But there is a really intriguing chart here: a market map of the companies skilling the green built environment workforce (page 23). We would have thought these companies are close to additional skills required by existing construction workers, and might be one way to view emerging and new skills requirements.
UK Net Zero Carbon Buildings Standard. Pilot Version
BBP, BRE, Carbon Trust, CIBSE, ISE, LETI, RIBA, RICS and UKGBC, September 2024.
As extended and new standards are agreed for buildings (this pilot version has involved a wide range of people) and will have quite a profound effect on the whole building industry. In Annex D we see eight roles and responsibilities, and for those interested in the skills and training needs show see pps.110-112. While a wide range of professional bodies have been central to the draft of this standard, it would be good to have IfATE and key awarding bodies involved too.
Improving the energy efficiency of Britain’s homes: the opportunity
CITB and Trustmark, October 2024.
Uses a survey of 500+ businesses which are largely PAS2030 accredited, with nearly 50% are MCS accredited. The skills interest for us here is around the interviews with retrofit coordinators and retrofit assessors, and the fact that 61% do both roles. There are also some insightful case studies, and good links to resources e.g. the CLC National Retrofit Hub and its six working groups.
Greener Homes Report
Rightmove, October 2024.
The usual annual report, showing slow progress with another 2% of homes achieving an EPC rating of C or above. Simple message: we need to move at scale and pace on both the financing and implementation of retrofitting. Perhaps the schemes we have discussed with installers and equipment manufacturers could become reality in at least one pilot area to show what is possible—maybe even run as a rapid competition sponsored by the UK Government.
Retrofit workforce roadmap: turning a green skills vision into reality
National Home Decarbonisation Group, April 2024.
This is an important group when it comes to decarbonising buildings and homes, and there is a Green Skills Working Group operating within it. A group to track, as it has the capacity to undertake and drive large scale (social) home decarbonisation and so improve skills supply and drive down the costs of retrofitting for all houses and buildings.
Engineering Construction Industry Training Board. Report of the trustees and accounts for the year ended 31 December 2023
HC 242, October 2024.
Nothing startling here, but what it does do is capture a critical industry for the transition to net zero in one place and show what is happening, what is being invested, the new schemes etc. So, worth a read for those looking for detail.
Platforms in Practice: A lean approach to industrialised construction
Bryden Wood, July 2023.
Standardising and industrialising construction has huge benefits in terms of cost, reduced waste, quality, and numerous ones for net zero (pages 150-157). Not a quick read but worth a quick review as it shows the revolution going through construction. We have to wonder if the same approach were to be adopted for retrofitting what the potential might be to increase the rate and depth of progress.
Minimum Energy Efficiency Standards (MEES): Protecting Your Assets
Knight Frank, 2023.
Whilst this is a sales brochure, it does provide a good summary of the MEES issues and actions being required across the property sector, and actions required of landlords, property developers, etc. With the scale of the commercial property sector, the retrofit jobs it will create will be probably more attractive to most contractors than dealing with small scale, domestic jobs. The question this raises with us is the need to produce “at-scale projects” across the domestic sector rather than lots of small, individual ones. It is worth also reading the Knight Frank Meeting the Commercial Property Retrofit Challenge (Sep 2024) which makes a key point as to the financial viability of undertaking MEES work when demand is low and recent investment has been low in commercial property.
Unlocking construction’s digital future: a skills plan for industry
CITB, October 2018.
Two aspects of this report: the two core competencies key to success (flexible mindset, understanding tools and data) – both are organisational competencies which are invariably left out of most skills analyses (they relate to specific jobs and occupations); and multiple levels of digital competency. We have to wonder how much these two elements are also relevant to the transition to net zero for construction businesses.
What matters for electrification? Evidence from 70 years of US home heating choices.
NBER Working Paper Series 28324, October 2023 (updated).
Taking the long view of the process of domestic electrification is useful in understanding how the switch varies across difference climates. It would be interesting to add the need for cooling.
Narratives shape innovation: a study of multiple innovations in the UK construction industry
Construction Management and Economics, 40, 2022, 884-902.
Fascinating study of 133 innovations in the construction industry, split across six categories: enable project completion; improve productivity; health and safety; sustainability (hence our interest); profit maximisation; and image creation. These types of studies are of real help when trying to understand the new and emerging skills requirements of a sector, but what is more difficult to assess is the speed of uptake of an innovation given the industries fragmented nature.
Forestry
Fighting wildfires with low-carbon buildings: Mass timber made from Colorado wildfire thinning is a win for local forests, communities, and the global climate
RMI, September 2024.
Raises a real question over the skills in forestry to make the selection of the timber to use or not use.
Hospitality
Hospitality Spotlight Report: Accelerating circular economy adoption
Circular Economy Hub, University of Exeter, September 2024.
One of five reports from the CE Hub at Exeter, showing how early it is for the sector in adopting circular economy principles and practices. The report draws on two workshops and a case study of the St Austell Brewery. Also shows the reliance of the sector on third parties and charities for handling the broken part of the food system (and others within the sector). Also contains an action plan (Figure 12) which carries a people element.
Manufacturing
Enabling Industrial Electrification: Summary of Responses
Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, September 2024.
We have been looking at electrification of engineering and manufacturing recently, and while nearly every story wants to talk about the auto industry and batteries, there is much more than this. This report, which summarises the responses to a consultation, tells us several things. Just two elements to pick out here: some technology gaps exist, particularly for high-heat processes; and increased confidence in novel electrification equipment is needed. Heat is critical to basic metals and fabricated metal products. This has profound implications for the net zero transition and the skills the sector has to acquire over a relatively short period of time.
֎The Heatwave: Unlocking the economic potential of UK heat pump manufacturing
IPPR, October 2024.
Simple message: the UK has significant capacity to make gas boilers and a growing capability in making heat pumps, and also has a huge domestic demand for heat pumps (5mn by 2030, and a further 19mn by 2050). Taking these two factors together says there is a huge opportunity for the UK to support the current heat pump manufacturing capacity. Key to boosting demand is shifting the financing of domestic heat pump installation, and here we are surprised that innovative payment mechanisms (i.e. spread installation costs across monthly energy payments), and also the move to develop scale installation solutions (drive down costs, speed up the process, shift the skill intensity of installation work etc.).
Transportation
Understanding the potential of battery-powered vessels for deep-sea shipping: A pre-feasibility study
Maersk Mc-Kinney Moller Center for Zero Carbon Shipping, September 2024.
A great resource which will prove valuable to the marine industry across the UK. The study helps in exploring the potential for batteries (well established for ferries) in deep-sea shipping. The appendix shows a long list of ports that are key part of this transition but only Southampton is listed in the UK.
Assessing a Louisiana-Japan Green Dry Bulk Corridor: A feasibility study for dry bulk trade
RMI, Cargill, Hy Stor Energy, Maersk McKinney Moller Centre for Zero Carbon Shipping, October 2024.
Another study showing the issues around green shipping, and certainly getting key players to work together across the supply chain. It can’t be too long before these scoping studies land on the preferred options, and allow adjustments to take place across the marine sector.
The State of Electric Vehicle Charging for Multifamily Housing: Assessing the public EV charging gap in US cities
Energy Innovation Policy and Technology, October 2024.
There are some huge gaps in access to public EV chargers. Here we see most current EV owners in the USA are white and live in single family homes. We need to consider that there are 278 million cars in the USA of which 140 million are used every day to commute to work. A good target for EV chargers is 25 multi-family homes to each EV charger; no city in the study meets this target. Three of the best performing cities are in California, and three of the worst are in Florida. There’s a message for the UK here and a way of measuring EV charger density and access, and might help us rethink current public EV installation. A challenge to be made here too: do we expect a 1:1 replacement of ICEs to EVs? And where do we see public transport to impact EV uptake?
Zero-Emission Commercial Vehicles. The time is now: A factbook for investors.
Bloomberg NEF, September 2024.
A useful and comprehensive status report on commercial EVs, showing the rate of development that is taking place.