As the sun sets on the Eraring Power Station’s operating life, Brett Harvey is one of several employees keen on staying in the energy industry.
Nearly all workers at Origin’s power station in NSW, due to shutter in two years as the nation weens itself off fossil fuels, have been eligible for retraining in whatever they choose.
Some have pursued careers outside the energy industry but more than 80 per cent have decided to stay, taking up the opportunity to train up as electricians or other occupations better suited to a low emissions economy.
It’s a welcome trend at a time when Australia faces a 42,000 shortfall of energy, gas and renewables workers by 2030 that the Powering Skills Organisation warns could blow out further without concerted effort to keep people moving through the training system.
An extra 22,000 apprentices should have been on the tools last year to meet the workforce needs of the transition, according to the government-backed independent jobs and skills council.
A failure to keep a healthy pipeline of electricians and other essential occupations progressing through training risks further slowing a clean energy transition already feeling the weight of cumbersome planning processes, community opposition and other roadblocks.
Mr Harvey, currently an instrumentation technician, is looking at a number of upskilling opportunities in the energy space, including a training and assessing certification.
A shortage of educators and training infrastructure has proven a stubborn problem and a top priority for Powering Skills Organisation chief executive officer Anthea Middleton.
Getting employers to take on apprentices was a perennial issue, she explained, exacerbated by an eight-fold increase in the value of major energy projects over the past 10 years.
“What is often misunderstood in the system is that everyone wants to hire a trained electrician, but no one wants to train the electrician,” she told AAP.
Training is a costly exercise dominated by small businesses that often do not reap the rewards of an extra pair of hands because their apprentices are snapped up by bigger outfits in their third or fourth years.
Enforcing early-stage apprentice quotas on major projects, namely large businesses, was flagged by the organisation as a way to incentivise the big end of town to bring on fresh trainees.
Ms Middleton was “urgently optimistic” Australia’s workforce hurdles could be overcome to clear the way for a fast, efficient energy transition but it was important to be ambitious.
“We really do need a collective view from the states and territories and the federal government on things like energy policy, on things like system reform,” she said.
Federal Skills and Training Minister Andrew Giles said meeting the energy workforce needs of the nation represented both a “huge challenge” and “equally huge opportunity”.
“Achieving our net zero targets, powering Australia with cheaper, cleaner, more reliable energy will, of course, require a large, indeed, a larger and a highly skilled workforce.”
Mr Giles outlined a number of existing federally-funded programs aimed at solving problems in the trainee pipeline, including a $30 million commitment towards turbo-charging the teacher, trainer and assessor workforce.
“We need to continue to work together – governments, industry, unions and other stakeholders – to get more apprentices into Australia’s energy sector.”
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