City Voices: A City & Guilds Podcast
Welcome to City & Guilds’ podcast series. Each month, we’ll be exploring some of the issues raised in our recent research and across skills development.
City Voices: A City & Guilds Podcast
Green Skills, How to be Ready
As the green skills gap in the UK widens, how can organisations adapt quickly enough to meet the growing demand? In this episode of Future skills, hosts Bryony Kingsland and Gavin O'Meara delve into the realities of the green skills shortage and how collaboration between employers and education providers can bridge this gap.
With insights from experts Stephen Knight of MCS Certified and Mark Buckton of Opergy, the episode reveals how traditional trades like mechanical and electrical engineering, along with roles in fabricating, welding, and pipe fitting, are increasingly crucial for green jobs. The race to net-zero is accelerating, but are we training enough workers to meet these needs?
This episode provides practical solutions to improve collaboration between employers and education providers, addressing the funding and salary challenges in the FE sector that hinder recruitment and retention.
With discussions on AI, automation, and the evolving role of trades in the green economy, this episode is a must-listen for anyone involved in sustainability, skills development, or the future of work in the net-zero era.
For further information about the material quoted in this episode visit:
Making Skills Work: The Path to Solving the Productivity Crisis - report
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what we're seeing now is we're working towards targets that are actually essentially around the corner anyway, so this is really very much the time to act.
Gavin O'Meara:Hi, thanks for joining us today for Future Skills. Today we're going to be looking all at green jobs. My name is Gavin O'Meara, I'm the CEO and founder of FE News. This is a joint City & Guilds and FE News production.
Bryony Kingsland:I'm joined by hi everybody, I'm Bryony Kingsland. Thanks for joining us today. This is the third episode of our exciting new series, future skills, in collaboration with Gavin from FE news. This particular session we're looking at all things green skills, net zero, sustainability. So findings from City Guild's research making skills work the path to solving the productivity crisis highlighted an urgent need to rethink how we upskill and reskill the UK workforce, and that's to meet the evolving demands of the various sectors, including green skills, which are key and, as we know, green skills are increasingly important and cut across a variety of different sectors as we approach our need to hit net zero. So the findings in the report emphasise the need for a coordinated approach to bridging the skills gap. We've got an amazing panel of sector experts today with us to help us explore the contributing factors and various hopefully practical solutions to address the skills challenges currently faced in the UK. Practical solutions to adjust the skills challenges currently faced in the UK.
Gavin O'Meara:Thanks, Bryony. We've got two really, really cool guests. We've got Stephen Knight from MCS, certified. We've got Mark Buckton from Opergy. So Mark Morning, Gavin Morning Bryony. Hey Steve, how are you Morning everyone so kicking things off? What do you see the most critical green skills currently missing in the UK workforce at the moment? Mark, can I kick this off with you?
Mark Buckton:Yeah, sure, Gavin, I think it's quite a long list and it's getting longer. Actually that's one of the issues. I mean, I think there's a lot around retrofit, but I'll let Steve kind of cover that side of things. In terms of kind of renewable energy, it's a lot of the old skills mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, very much high voltage, particularly as the power network needs a lot of upgrading work, so kind of high voltage electrical skills. And then you've got the stuff for carbon capture, you've got the stuff for offshore wind maybe onshore wind which obviously is now starting to grow again and that's kind of fabricators, welders, pipe fitters, that sort of role I suppose quite traditional trades sometimes surprises people with green skills that's interesting.
Bryony Kingsland:Can I just ask that sort of like expand out a button, that mark? Obviously they're the more traditional roles, which is great to hear, but do those traditional roles need additional skills, because I mean, currently a lot of those qualifications are in place, but do those learners that would potentially maybe take a welding course or a mechanical engineering or electrical engineering programme, do they also need additional skills attached to that that are more orientated towards the green and net zero and sustainability aspects of the role?
Mark Buckton:No, I don't think. I think the NOS and I think the qualifications that are there at the moment are more than capable of covering the requirement for green skills. I suppose there's a bit around being more environmentally friendly in part of your work not wasting as much, not using as much energy, things like that, I think. In terms of HSEQ, I'm hearing much more that there's a need for more environmental analysts and people with environmental knowledge. I'm hearing that the amount of carbon that we currently produce as the UK is actually overstated because of the way that it's currently being reported. So in future, as more and more organisations are going to have to report their carbon, I think there's a big skills gap there.
Gavin O'Meara:That's interesting, isn't it? Because if you're overstating, I understand why, but then, as things go closer and closer to deadline dates, you're going to want to be more accurate. What's, what's being stated and stuff steve. Where do you see the missing skills gaps? And you know retrofit has already been sort of mentioned. Where do you sort of see the gaps?
Stephen Knight:yeah, I think, probably from an mcs perspective working in small scale renewable space, we see a lot of growth. So it's quite interesting that we are seeing people come into the sector just not anywhere near the rate that we need to see them come into the sector. So there's still a massive need for installers of technologies relating to homegrown energy, for example. We know that as people leave the workforce for whatever reason it may be, those roles aren't necessarily backfilled adequately. So we're actually sort of running at a slight sort of loss and there's some really good research actually from the electrical contractors association that bears this out in the electrotechnical sector. But if you sort of take the scheme, for example, this year we've welcomed around 300 new contractors to the scheme and if we take an average business size of five, that's 1500 people who have effectively entered the small scale renewable sector, not necessarily installing but also hopefully trying to fill the other gaps that I see with these business mostly kind of in terms of scaling, really, so ensuring consumers are protected, delivering quality and projects involving other organizations that are managed. So I think there's also probably things to be learned in terms of business developing skills when it comes to scaling, because you're working with jobs now that involve multiple kind of moving parts. They're not necessarily one or two thousand pounds, they're 10, 15, 20, 25 000 pounds.
Stephen Knight:Other contractors need to be worked with, so historically, maybe people you didn't interact with as much. You're now requiring electrically skilled people or roofing specialists, for example, in the case of solar pv. I think what this also does now is it creates a real skills demand in the education sector. So you've got the problems with recruiting there, which I think are widely publicised. You need more experience in the field as well when it comes to looking after and mentoring these people who are working in apprenticeships and then assessing installations and things like that. So it all kind of can hold up that deployment process. I think.
Bryony Kingsland:One of the things there that we're hearing more and more and I've seen a couple of examples of this best practice is when employers and training providers are working together and collaborating over these sort of projects in terms of basically upskilling college and provider staff to make sure they've got up-to-date skills to enable them to deliver the skills that you need in your workforce, but also having a better understanding of what needs to be delivered curriculum-wise to meet the skill shortages. How do you think, from a collaboration point of view, Steve, we can expand out on that, Because it's a big demand. We know it's massive, we know collaboration works, but it's still probably not gaining as much traction. The collaboration aspect of employers working more with providers what's stopping it and how can we remove that gate, I suppose is the question I've got linked to that.
Stephen Knight:I think the foundations are already there the nature of how apprenticeships work.
Stephen Knight:You need to have a relationship between an education provider and an employer, but I think ostensibly we look at those possibly as two separate things.
Stephen Knight:You're on day release, here for this day, you're out here that day, and actually what really needs to be happening is those relationships need to be built on and you know, I'm lucky enough to sort of see examples of that in my working life, whereby those people are taking, for example, maybe the staff of the college into the field to observe work being undertaken, or similarly, coming in delivering master classes, explaining what they're learning here and where the currency is actually in, kind of in the field, because things are very different and naturally what happens in the classroom cannot catch up.
Stephen Knight:You know, the nature of the sort of the system is such that you cannot pick up those kind of new bits and that's why it's so important, so that information I think really needs to be delivered into college and similarly, the things that you're trying to embed all around it in terms of shaping the individual and focusing on behaviors and things. I think that's something as well that can sort of flow the other way, as well as the technical knowledge, and I think that's where the kind of the foundation starts. I think it's there. It's just a case of kind of you know, maybe people realizing those boundaries don't really exist, they're artificial. You are working towards one goal, which is bring that individual and make them, you know, really good at what they do.
Bryony Kingsland:Do you think the government can do more to encourage employers in some shape or form to collaborate more effectively with the training provider sector to generate that sort of outcome?
Stephen Knight:Yeah, I mean we've sort of seen financial incentives, for example, being announced for employers on apprenticeships recently, which I think is a help. I think it's probably trying to get that engagement in terms of taking on apprentices as well, because we've seen that it doesn't necessarily translate from people on full-time courses onto apprenticeships, for example. So I think incentivizing the employers and invariably this always comes down to money but being able to take these people on and encourage those kind of relationships there, and also proactively having policy in place that apprentices will be there in 10 years time because the work will be there in 10 years time. It's easy to kind of say that regarding policy, but it really is a foundation. What we're seeing now is we're working towards. Targets are actually essentially around the corner anyway, so this is really very much the time to act.
Mark Buckton:But also I think collaborations need to be right.
Mark Buckton:So I often hear employers say, oh well, we'll get the guys who are just about to retire, who want to give back their knowledge to young people to do the tutoring, and often they're not the best people to do that because they're quite generationally removed from the young people in the new entrance.
Mark Buckton:So actually you kind of want quite younger, trained, skilled individuals to be able to go back and support with colleges and training providers, often not the kind of people about to retire. So the collaboration has got to be right. But also I think employers need to accept that people won't come out of academic institutions fully trained. You know, the equipment is incredibly expensive, the raw materials are incredibly expensive. None of these individuals will be able to have done the quantity and quality of work in the workshop, as it were, that they get on site or in the workplace, and so employers need to always understand that the knowledge will be there, and often the colleges and the training providers provide really good knowledge but maybe the hand skills and the kind of on-site capability won't quite be there and they do need to spend time giving them that last 10, 15, 20 percent of on-the-job finishing off for them to be fully competent.
Bryony Kingsland:So it's about an employer investing their time and energy and their mentoring skills there as well. We definitely got an issue there with the funding for the FE sector, which has come up in several of our episodes where we've discussed the fact that training providers cannot compete with industry salaries. So I understand what you're saying, mark, about getting younger people into training providers, but if those younger people can get paid £20,000 more for being on site, they're going to choose that job rather than choose to go and deliver in a college, unless they've got a vocation and I think when you're younger, that's rare. It's more a case of I actually need to earn money because I want to pay for a house that I want. So there's that challenge of I'm wondering if there's some way that we can address that in terms of that masterclass type approach. I don't know. I mean, it's a difficult one, isn't it? It is that the FE sector is criminally underfunded, as we all know.
Gavin O'Meara:It's like 9 to 10K difference between schools and FE. I mean that's a difference in its own, let alone industry, isn't it? I think Steve had a really good point around looking at. Yeah, if it's funding for employers as well, is that there's a difference to a large employer, like there's lots of changes come with the levy, but the SME side as well, if it's five like members of staff, that's a 20% of the workforce could be an apprentice. That's that's very different sort of dynamic compared to it being maybe two percent or something like that. And it's how do you, how do you incentivize that for SMEs, maybe differently than what you would do as well for large employers? I mean, there's loads of dynamics in there, isn't there around? How do you get the balance right?
Mark Buckton:really there is particularly around the level of productivity and health and safety. If you've got too many unskilled kind of people learning versus the proportion of people who are fully skilled, then it does make it more difficult to monitor them and have a safe working environment.
Stephen Knight:Yeah, and I think that it's quite important to state that. You know nearly half of all jobs in FAE are either ad hoc or part-time anyway. So what you're not necessarily asking people to do is now just commit and completely, you know, change career, take a pay cut from being in the field, which is essentially what it always amounts to. Unfortunately, it is a case of is there scope within the business to dip in? And I appreciate for SMEs that's not necessarily always the case, but that's kind of half you want to try and tread. I think it really is getting that expertise in on more of an ad hoc basis, like the masterclasses you mentioned, Bryony.
Bryony Kingsland:Yeah so, and we've said that obviously that we've got a growing number of green skills jobs and green skills needs and we need more staff. There's a significant shortage of workers with the necessary training and knowledge. I suppose this question is all around how we can better meet the growing demand for skilled staff in sustainability, a green skills sector, but do you think that the education system is adapting and is agile or fast enough and adapting in a way that is needed to meet these shortages, and is there anything else we can do any better way we can meet the growing demand for staff skilled in sustainability, in green skills.
Stephen Knight:I think probably the first thing to state is that the green skills sector itself is very much on its way to just being the sector, I think, in the same way you sort of see in other fuels and technologies, sort of start from scratch. People dip their toes into a new fuel, new heating system, whatever it may be. The old skills become more and more kind of legacy skills. So the industry is now kind of more leaning into electrification of heat. What that change means, what that means regarding consumers as well, in terms of the way the jobs are structured. We ourselves at MCS, we've seen nearly four times an increase in heat pumps from just before the COVID-19 pandemic and sort of 2024. However we've although we share those figures with the various governors of the UK and it demonstrates a great rate of growth we're still so far off the mark with those kind of things. So I think, in terms of meat and demand, we've seen things like new apprenticeship standards come in, such as the low carbon heating technician standard, of which MCS were involved in and we worked with some great employers that kind of saw the need for this. I do think there's go to do better in adapting these at a rate that's, you know, reasonable and not too onerous. We can't be changing things every two seconds, but by the same count we do need to kind of adapt as technology evolves but also as methods change and other kind of technologies come in. So if you think of that kind of a friendship standard, we see an increase in things like air-to-air heat pumps or thermal energy storage systems, for example.
Stephen Knight:So I think there's that aspect of staying current as well, but also there's a place to play for your CPD courses.
Stephen Knight:You know manufacturers, trade associations, employers meeting the demand themselves for certain bits and pieces. I've been lucky to work with some some large kind of utility scale solar businesses over the last few months and their stuff is so bespoke the only way you can do it is to take someone with a call, bring them in with a set of skills and tailor it in the business itself, and so businesses having to rise to meet these challenges. Understandably, a lot of this stuff may not necessarily be viable, and I think as well. The other thing and I think mark's already kind of made the point is, when we're talking about meeting this growing demand, we're talking about extensions of existing skill sets. In so many cases this is evolution as opposed to revolution. You know, direct current is not an alien concept to electricians. Heating and hot water system design is not something that's exclusive to heat pumps. There is so much foundation to build on anyway, and so we do have that kind of pool of expertise there too yeah, I think steve's right.
Mark Buckton:All the kind of tools are there. You know, you've got the apprenticeship standards, you've got funding, aeb, etc. So the stuff is there. I think the issue issue is that skills doesn't work very well with a rapid ramp up. You know, skills works well with a gradual increase and I think that's the real issue is the fact that we're probably going to see incredible growth in renewable energy and hopefully retrofit as well, and suddenly you're going to need lots of people and that's kind of almost the worst time to train people.
Mark Buckton:There's always going to be a two year lag. There's always going to be a long time to ramp up, and I think the skills sector is probably quite well prepared and has been it's been kind of on off for a while, ever since the Green Skills Grant and things like that, so the sector is quite ready. It then takes a long time for people to want to join a sector, for instance, and it's about the influences and about the teachers and the parents saying, actually, yeah, this is a good career for you, going into green and renewable energy et cetera, but that's a societal change. So it takes a long time to kind of get those people into the colleges into the training providers, then the training providers then ramping up because they can't ramp up beforehand, and then the employers taking the people on, whereas actually often we find suddenly someone will build something and they suddenly need a thousand people, and that doesn't.
Stephen Knight:You know, the skill system doesn't work like that I was just going to say having worked in training when you get that big increase in demand, the very nature of what you do is very front-end, loaded for an equipment standpoint and things. So it's really challenging to scale because all of a sudden you're trying to find a significant part of cash if the system's not already in place, or you're trying to just put through those larger numbers and still deliver a really good experience there's something I've sort of observed that we've seen throughout the season so far is around yes, stevie's mentioning deep pumps and stuff like that and we've mentioned retro fit.
Gavin O'Meara:So for an audience that's like thinking of older buildings that need to be bought to the standard, the stuff like that. That seems to be like an interdisciplinary, intersectionality sort of approach around, sort of looking holistically, that's just looking at that one thing. But also we've been mentioning electrical systems to high voltage. How much do we need to be thinking around interdisciplinary that sort of system thinking approach where these things all sort of line up around skills gaps and where we need to build capacity?
Mark Buckton:Well, it's hugely important. I mean, one of the reasons why the government have pushed back the ban on oil and gas boilers or in fact removed it completely, is because actually you haven't got the amount of power network to provide the power to houses to replace oil and gas boilers. So it's very much interconnected with the electrification of our lives and heat, as Steve says. Then you know we need more electrical power generation in a low carbon manner. So that's nuclear, onshore wind, offshore wind, solar, as Steve said, utility level solar. You've then got to get that power to where it's needed, and often that's a completely different location, you know, because you've got offshore wind, you've got nuclear power stations, always a long way away from conurbations. So you've then got to get that power to the houses. And then you've got to, you know, change the way that that's used.
Mark Buckton:And you mentioned retrofits and I mean Steve's the expert here. But you mentioned retrofit. Oh, you know, it's to older houses. Well, actually I think the last time I saw was that 25 million of the 30 million houses in the UK do need some sort of retrofit and that is probably swapping out a boiler. So it's not just old houses, actually it's the vast majority of the housing stock needs something doing to them. Deep retrofit, you know the insulation, new windows, you windows, you know ventilation and then power source. That's a smaller number and it's a lot more work needs to be very, very integrated together.
Stephen Knight:But again, I mean, you know steve's expert on that yeah, I agree, and you know, getting that infrastructure in place once you're there, you know great for when you're, when you're developing buildings, but you say you're working on kind of existing infrastructure that could be there from, you know, post-war, and compounding that, you have the sort of the interaction between the various measures you can take. So there's also consideration, you know, and things that came out the the hackett report, for example, around certain skill sets, not knowing enough about other skill sets and how they can potentially interact or indeed how they're impacting on that. You know fire stopping being obviously a crucial one there. So are you putting in a method of you know, from a retrofit perspective, that will negatively interact, because we all know that insulation and ventilation go hand in hand, and if you make that mistake, what you actually do is you just go against everything you're trying to do for retrofit, but also, crucially, you've lost an advocate of that, as well as creating horrible conditions.
Stephen Knight:I think there's also a lot to be said around interoperability of various technologies, too, and that that's something that's kind of. The next thing around the corner, I think, is that we have generation, we have storage, we have a heat pump, but do we have it in such a way that it can work in the most efficient manner and do the people installing it know that it needs to interact with those kind of other technologies in such a way that you get the most efficiency out of it. Because you know going with heat pumps, for example you know there's a well-designed system will work very well. You also know that if you don't work with what's around you, then it can go very badly and end up costing an absolute fortune. So I think that's the next thing.
Mark Buckton:I think interoperability yeah, which is why the retrofit designer and retrofit coordinator roles are so important to make sure that the design is done correctly and then implemented correctly.
Stephen Knight:And and those, brian, are kind of two very new kind of green job roles are needed, and because there's not a lot of them out there, it's hard to get people into those kind of roles because it's not a job role that people knows about, unlike the more traditional careers mark's absolutely right, and it's a real challenge because you need such a broad swathe of knowledge of how these operate on sort of a fairly sort of fundamental level to be able to know what will and won't be sort of feasible in terms of doing that and also, crucially, the order in which you take those retrofit measures as well.
Bryony Kingsland:Well, that's left me a bit stunned. Actually, all of that, it's not something I'd thought about or considered as part of the sort of net zero skills taken, that interoperability, that sort of fusing of different skills. And when you take into consideration things like the AI infrastructure that we're building in the country at the moment and how much energy that's going to take how much energy we know it's already taking, and the other utilities that you've mentioned, and the onshoring of wind and the transport of that energy from one part of the country to another, are we being innovative enough or flexible enough, knowing what's coming in terms of developing skills, and are there skills that you can see coming that we don't know about yet that we need to start thinking about as a skills sector?
Mark Buckton:I mean, I think something I'm hearing. You know a lot of you mentioned AI, but yeah, ai, the Internet of Things, automation, robotics is areas that people are saying there's real demand for and actually not having those more technical skills is likely to hold back the kind of green transition, not only for the more technical people but actually just for the wider workforce. You know, having those technical capabilities on an everyday basis, and certainly I think as a society we need to almost expect to be having a proportion of training on a yearly basis on the new technology that's out there. You know the disruptors that we don't even know about yet brian is, as you mentioned, because technology is advancing so quickly that it's very easy to leave the workforce behind. So, yeah, I think we almost need to expect to have a day's training a year on new technology and how we can apply it in the workplace for everyone in the country.
Stephen Knight:Totally agree yeah, and I think with that, we sort of probably need to move towards a more structured kind of cpd approach to this as a result.
Stephen Knight:Because I completely agree, mark, you need to be at the forefront, and actually is the way to do that, you know, sort of mandating that you spend x hours a year, whatever. It is kind of making sure that you're sort of the forefront of it. And also I think there needs to be an understanding of how well sort of ai infrastructure can dovetail with these technologies and things, and it's rather something that adds roles as opposed to takes away roles, which I think is sort of a common misconception with these things. You know, we look at how ai, for example, can help with electricity tariffs and manage kind of manage individuals usage. We've got people now on tariffs that are sufficiently smart they can actually make most of the technologies and things, and so that's just one way that it's all starting to to bleed into sort of the house but I think a really important area both the skills but also socially is to make sure that local communities benefit from the green revolution and actually that the money spent is spent in the uk.
Mark Buckton:And I don't want to mention tariffs, but what tariffs have done is really shown the imbalance in manufacture there is globally and I think it's really important for the government to look at really building manufacturing base in the UK, for the green technologies to start making solar panels here, to start making more of wind turbines, more of you know, carbon capture plants that sort, because otherwise local communities won't benefit in terms of jobs and skills from these new initiatives and actually the majority of the money spent on them will go abroad, which I think would be a real shame, and I think the tariffs debate that started has shown that's a real and, you know, very viable threat and something we probably want to do something about. But manufacturing again is an area that is troubling for workforce. It is having real trouble attracting skilled people and people wanting to work in manufacture.
Gavin O'Meara:And it's thinking of the sustainability around that as well, like British Steel and the amount of carbon that's being created out there. But you've got to keep it. We're nearly out of time. I was wondering if we could ask one question that's come up a few times, but I was keeping it at the end. Now, thinking around careers advice and guidance, not just for young people but also for sort of career changes as well, maybe a couple of thoughts, steve maybe, on what do we need to be thinking around for that?
Stephen Knight:yeah, I think there's probably a number of things which I will try and scoot over as quickly as physically possible. We know there's a disconnect between young people who have a concern with the environment and also an awareness that they could actually have a positive impact on the planet through the work that they do. There's been research carried out by the MCS Foundation that's kind of found that and, in summary, there's several things you need to do. One you need to show that the roles themselves have an impact over the lifetime of your career. I think we need to show examples of what the jobs look like and what the people look like too. I'm proud enough to work at an organization that's over 60 women in an industry that's historically quite male dominated, and so we do actually examples where people can look and see themselves in the industry. I think that's really important. We need to be much better on career path.
Stephen Knight:Skills is a bit of a minefield, and you know what we really need to do is stress, apprenticeships, work-based evidence requirements, things that are in locks with the building regulations, so people demonstrate the adequate skills, knowledge, experience and behaviors for the job, and then probably, finally, we need to kind of meet people where they are in this, whether it's on social media, whether it's in person, but we do need to be, be out there and discuss that your passions can actually have a career in here. We're not just talking about installation here, but you know unique communication skills. There's administrative, there's procurement, there's design, there's manufacturer that we've kind of covered and all of those things kind of translate to manufacturing. Independence is energy independence and kind of highlighting that actually in kind of the whole grand scheme of things, there is also a place for that on very much kind of a local level, and that goes back to mark's point about kind of communities as well yeah, cool mark.
Mark Buckton:I'd love to hear your take on careers advice gone as young, but also those career changes as well yeah, for me it's the hefe debate and I think those kind of that 1990s push that everyone needs to go to university is now proving to be really damaging for the country, and I think I'd really push people to say, actually, trades are now a really really viable career, really well paid, really enjoyable, and there's so much opportunity there and and I think more people need to be going and getting fe education rather than he education.
Gavin O'Meara:For me, yeah, no, definitely thank you everyone for today's really written a shot by. I absolutely flew by, but it's so. I think science coming out again is that interconnected and how we need to be thinking around. Also. Then careers advice we could spend a whole day talking about that and how it all connects through. But, Mark Steve Bryony, thank you so much. Those that are joining us today, I want to say thank you as well. Really really interesting, really important show today and next episode's going to be on construction, so I'd love for you to