The Missing Engine of Net Zero

Our First Thursday Top Read made us think: a Net Zero transition without a Workforce Plan is like a car without an engine.

It’s a big old To Do list, isn’t it? Hydrogen clusters, battery factories, 300,000 new homes a year, electrification, AI and data centres, heat pumps, retrofits, clean energy growth zones, and an airport expansion in the mix for good measure. According to Rachel from Accounts, the UK is getting punchy in the fight for growth, with plans sprawling across industries and regions. And yet, we keep coming back to the same question: where are the skilled workers coming from?

Darren Davidson, CEO of Siemens Energy, reckons we’ll need half a million new workers to get net zero done. And our Green Edge Top Read for this month, Bain & Co’s Accelerating Together: How the UK Workforce Can Get Net Zero Done (2024) lays out the reskilling challenge: a major churn in skills, occupations shifting, jobs disappearing in one sector and reappearing in another. And while Skills England, the devolved nations’ skills bodies, and the Office for Clean Energy Jobs all have roles to play, there seems to be no overarching plan that pulls it all together. The UK needs a workforce strategy that isn’t just reactive but anticipates where the green economy is heading. In short, a whole-economy approach.

We made this point in our recent response to the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero’s (DESNZ) consultation on workforce planning to deliver clean, secure energy. The skills needed for net zero aren’t just about clean energy jobs. They run across industries, geographies, and supply chains. We have to trust that the Government understands the technical skills side—engineering, retrofitting, heat networks. But the wider labour market dynamics? Not so much.

Take electrification. We—and others who are closer to the action than us—have said it before, but it bears repeating: we need more electricians, and fast. But there’s also a case for new occupations—specialist roles that can handle some electrical duties under supervision, allowing us to make the best use of a scarce resource. The same applies across other trades. And then there’s the wider skills mix. Bain & Co’s report highlights the full range: business skills, data analysis, environmental knowledge, finance, ICT, and the whole spectrum of green life skills, from adaptability to systems thinking.

The numbers are eye-watering. Around 4 million people will need upskilling or reskilling for net zero, with 240,000 jobs lost in the transition and 100,000 new entrants needed by 2030. And that’s before we get into regional variations—Aberdeen’s shift from oil and gas to renewables is a different story from the skills needs of the South East’s airport expansion.

Cumulative UK roles lost (~240k), gained (~1mn) and needing reskilling (~4mn). Chart: TGE from ONS / Bain analysis

We need a plan that works at both the national and local levels. That means workforce data that can track skills demand, occupation shifts, and local labour market movements. It means a national retrofitting strategy that isn’t just about individual installations but scales up to district-wide approaches, learning from Germany’s Thermondo and Enpal, and building on the work of the likes of Aira Home, Warma UK, Puraflow Renewables, Renewafuel, Adlår, and ELT Heat. It means recognising that the bulk of the Clean Energy Mission will be delivered by the existing workforce, not new entrants—so reskilling and redeployment are key.

For all this to happen, policy certainty is non-negotiable. Employers won’t invest in training if they don’t know where the market is heading. The Office for Clean Energy Jobs could play a crucial role here, developing high-quality workforce projections, coordinating sector bodies, and tracking investment trends. A Clean Energy Tracker—something well used in the US—could help businesses and policymakers see where the opportunities and gaps are.

And let’s not forget the training infrastructure itself. We need more programmes, more places, more trainers. The Bootcamp model has potential, but it needs more flexibility to adapt to local needs. Employers should be incentivised to train beyond their immediate workforce needs, creating a pipeline of skilled workers that can move across sectors as demand shifts.

So, where does this leave us? The Bain & Co report sets out the scale of the challenge. The DESNZ consultation shows that government is at least asking the right questions. But what we don’t have yet is a workforce plan that ties it all together—a plan that links net zero, nature recovery, economic growth, demographic shifts, and migration patterns into a coherent strategy.

This isn’t just about skills. It’s about making sure the UK has the workforce to deliver on its ambitions. The policies are in place, the investments are coming, but without a workforce plan, the Net Zero car—electrified, of course—has no engine.