Green collar jobs are key to delivering Labour's 2030 clean power mission

Skills are the key to unlock Labour's ambitious plans to reach net zero by 2030. This is my comment piece from Business Green over the summer on Labour's plans for green skills

The sense of urgency about the climate crisis needs to be matched by that for green skills, argues Labour MP Andrew Pakes, co-chair of the APPG on Apprenticeships

The new government has already hit the ground running introducing the Great British Energy Bill, overturning the ban on onshore wind, announcing a major shake-up of planning rules and setting out plans to get Britain building again. To be the party of the builders, not the blockers, means that the new government also needs a workplace plan as ambitious as its climate objectives – we must ensure we have the builders, the engineers and the workforce needed to transform the country.

The new government has started with a sense of urgency over its clean energy mission and rightly so. The UK has fallen back over the last decade losing out on investment and green manufacturing jobs as relied on imports and overseas expertise to deliver infrastructure, such as turbines. Only this week, data was released by Make UK that showed the decline of UK manufacturing exports, placing us outside of the global top 10 for the first time on record.

Our new Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero Ed Miliband has already identified this challenge, stating to Parliament that the capacity to generate jobs in clean energy depends on if we can provide the skills to match demand. In my view, this remains the essential task in meeting net zero and generating new higher quality jobs.

I'm not the only one to identify the centrality of the skills challenge. There is a growing consensus around the need to build up engineering skills in the UK, and that this is a body of work which the last government failed to deliver. The recent Winser review into speeding up the deployment of a net zero grid concluded skills shortages are "becoming a constraint" on delivery. The International Energy Agency (IEA) has also warned "skills shortages threaten to slow the ramp up of clean energy technologies".

Last week I chaired a discussion on skills at the Green Renewal summit, hosted by the Labour Climate and Environment Forum (LCEF), where panellists touched on not only how we build out our supply chains but also the narratives that underpin our transition.

On supply chains, we know that a lack of clarity and proper industrial strategy in recent years have led to skills shortages and industry being unable to invest in training and recruitment for the long term. Ambitious government targets are welcome but will be met with bottlenecks across a range of sectors unless there is targeted investment as part of a proper industrial strategy, and prioritisation in key areas for investment and growth.

Employers need direction from this new government to attract not only young people, but those in mid-career from outside the sectors where there are skills shortages. As part of this we must make upskilling and apprenticeships more attractive and look again at apprenticeship wages and future earning potential to ensure steady recruitment.

Crucial to this recruitment is the way it is framed: those in the political and clean energy space like to cite ‘green jobs', but we should also talk of stability, pay and aspiration- criteria that will bring people into these roles. We must talk of not only jobs but of opportunity, for workers and country.

A point well made to me on Friday was that often when we talk of turning blue collar jobs into green ones, we risk replicating the same gender disparity that has historically existed in construction, engineering and heavy industry; a disparity that if continued will only stymie recruitment and hold back the green transition.

To cite one example where recruitment is desperately needed: the UK has failed to train enough engineers over the past several decades, meaning we do not currently have enough engineers, and a lot of the UK's existing engineering workforce are moving towards the end of their careers. Though this isn't just about abstract statistics or even a singular sector. The power of net zero is that it also drives regeneration, new opportunities and secure jobs, especially in communities like mine.

I have spent a career fighting for the concept of a Just Transition whereby the move to low carbon takes communities and workers with it. This is the opportunity to use clean energy and net zero to transition us from blue collar to green collar jobs. In Peterborough, we have a deep industrial heritage, which we can build on to create the new high skilled opportunities of the future. Our college is already building a new Centre for Green Technology to deliver green apprenticeships in areas like heat pump installation, energy efficiency and electric vehicle infrastructure. We are well placed to be a hub for industrial green hydrogen with plans for a new transition centre around ARU Peterborough university.

All of this requires the joined-up government that Labour's missions promise, working across silos to delivery infrastructure, planning and skills in an integrated way. Plans for Skills England will oversee reform of the Apprenticeship Levy and better post-16 education to that it provides the opportunities that communities like mine, and so many others, need. Devolving the delivery of green skills to business and local government means communities can help shape the future mix of jobs in their area.

The sense of urgency about our climate crisis needs to be matched by an urgency about skills. When we talk about our future, it needs be about both planet and people.

Andrew Pakes is the Labour & Co-operative MP for Peterborough, former deputy general secretary of Prospect union, and co-chair for the APPG on Apprenticeships.

Here is the article on Business Green https://www.businessgreen.com/opinion/4342386/green-collar-jobs-key-delivering-labours-2030-clean-power-mission