Renewables industry offers renewed job hope

According to Mark Wilkie, Operations Director, Energy, at recruiters Matchtech, the 40% drop in oil prices over the past year has forced many oil firms to slash capex and reduce the number of new wells they are exploring and drilling. As a result, demand for engineers in the oil and gas industry has fallen dramatically, and headlines of job losses have been commonplace. However, all is not lost for oil and gas engineers, as they are a vital source of talent to the growing offshore renewables industry, and can play an important role in plugging the skills gap now.

In stark contrast to the oil and gas industry, demand for engineers in offshore renewables is on an upward trajectory. A recent report, Working for a Green Britain jointly commissioned by Energy and Utility Skills (EU Skills) and RenewableUK, stated that 55,000 people will be directly employed in wind power by 2020, a huge five-fold increase in ten years. With more than half a million people expected to be working across UK renewables by 2020, this is a significant and growing industry. Indeed, the recent announcement that Swansea’s tidal lagoon has been granted planning permission demonstrates the wheels are in motion to establish the next generation of renewable power in the UK.

What unites all types of renewable energy businesses is their reliance on skilled engineers to design and build complex structures in challenging environments, but with projects such as the tidal lagoon coming into the pipeline, coupled with the industry wide skills shortage, businesses are struggling to find the talent they need to deliver.

Many of the oil and gas engineers that have been displaced from their jobs or are currently facing limited career prospects have skills that can be easily transferred to the renewable energy industry. health & safety engineers and structural engineers are in particularly high demand in the renewable industry and oil and gas engineers trained in these disciplines can relatively easily make the switch, particularly to permanent rather than contract roles. More generally, the skills of oil and gas engineers are highly complementary to those required in renewable energy as their work on rigs involves many similar engineering challenges to offshore windfarms, for example.

However, Wilkie argues, for the skills of oil and gas engineers to be fully utilised and transferred, the onus is on employers to be open to accepting engineers from this sector and to provide suitable training to ensure an effective transition; the engineers must be equipped with the industry-specific skills required to be of immediate value within offshore renewables. This open-minded and supportive approach is crucial if employers are to successfully fill vacancies and retain engineers that have transferred.

By Jake Frith