Thankyou to the Hydrogen Council of Australia for organising a Jobs and Skills of the Future Forum on 20 September 2022. Three reports presented at that forum provide an insight to our future workforce requirements:
Clean Energy Council
The Clean Energy Council of Australia released a report in August 22 “Skilling the Energy Transition” and showing the types of skills required to meet the energy transition in Australia and where there are skill gaps. The report can be downloaded at CEC_Skilling-the-Energy-Transition-2022.pdf (cleanenergycouncil.org.au) and provides a possible scenario of skills, careers that would be required in the workforce of the future in energy sector. Page 10 of this report shows the skills and roles in high demand and that Asset Manager skills are required in all clean energy sectors – solar, wind, hydro, battery, hydrogen economy.
Construction Sector Queensland
The Construction Sector in Queensland has also undertaken some research in conjunction with CSIRO to model three scenarios to net zero in Queensland considering both expert and domestic H2 needs. Take a look at their website here https://www.csq.org.au/renewables. The research shows opportunities for Regional Australia and particularly across Northern Australia from Gladstone to the Pilbara.
CSQ predicts a step change in labour needs in the renewable energy sector, unlike the mining boom where the jobs peaked and then returned to normal base load.
Net Zero Australia Report – Preliminary Findings
On 25th August 2022, the University of Melbourne released interim findings on the “Net Zero Australia Report” considering various scenarios for Australia to reach Net Zero. Read more at https://energy.unimelb.edu.au/news-and-events/events/net-zero-australia-interim-findings
Taking the various scenarios the types of jobs, skills and where they might be needed and when were calculated. Findings predict that although domestic decarbonisation will require significant workforce growth mostly the growth in workforce is required to grow experts across northern Australia which is predicted to experience significant population growth with implications for first Nations Peoples, security and immigration.
