Updated employment factors and occupational shares for the energy transition
J Rutovitz, Rebecca R. Langdon, Chris Briggs, Franziska Mey, Elsa Dominish, Kriti Nagrath
Abstract
This study contributes to global energy workforce planning by presenting updated employment factors and occupational shares for the electricity workforce, covering generation, storage, and transmission construction. Global labour shortages are already recognised as a risk to energy sector transformation. To enable effective workforce development, it is important to know the scale, location, timing, and occupational composition of the required labour. However, data gaps may mean projections do not reflect current employment intensities and only provide gross numbers. A suite of indicators based on large-scale surveys in Australia and information from literature have been updated using cost declines as a proxy for labour productivity gains. This research presents employment factors for the number jobs created at each project stage, compares them to international estimates, and presents detailed occupational shares for five technologies. These indicators were used to make projections for the Australian 2024 Integrated System Plan for electricity, and sample results are discussed. These show that projected employment for large scale renewable generation under least cost scenarios for the energy transition are highly volatile. There is also significant overlap between occupations needed for different technologies and transmission. As countries try to rapidly expand renewable capacity and transmission infrastructure, integration of workforce projections into electricity scenarios using employment indicators allows for better planning. Workforce projections can inform policymakers of the need to reduce volatility, as well as helping training institutions, industry and governments to plan for the scale of workforce growth needed.