Clean Energy Jobs Plan: Technical Annex

Abstract:

This annex describes the experimental approach taken to assessing the growth required in the clean energy workforce from a 2023 baseline to 2030, where opportunities are likely to be located, and the types of occupations likely to be in high demand and relatively more difficult to fill.

Clean energy technologies encompass power generation, transmission and distribution, greenhouse gas removals, clean heat, and energy efficiency. The full list of sub-sectors is provided in Table 1 below. Clean energy jobs are measured as the number of jobs that are supported by the deployment and operation of clean energy technologies and their supply chains. This analysis covers both direct and indirect jobs, these employment categories can be defined as:

Induced jobs are excluded from this analysis; employment resulting from the spending of wages by workers in direct and indirect employment, leading to increased demand in other sectors.

This analysis does not measure net additional jobs across the economy. Much of the increase in workforce across clean energy sectors will involve workers who have transitioned from other sectors or will displace high carbon energy jobs; however, these effects are not accounted for as the evidence is not available. The analysis also does not capture replacement demand - i.e., the workers required to replace workers that leave the clean energy workforce.

There is inherent uncertainty in estimating the size of the 2030 clean energy workforce. The future size and geographic spread of the clean energy workforce will be dependent on delivery and final location of the pipeline of projects out to 2030, the ability to recruit into the sector, cost assumptions, any assumptions made about the ability of UK businesses to export overseas, and the validity of the assumptions made around the workers required to deploy a particular amount of technology. These estimates do not represent precise predictions; they are indicative of the orders of magnitude the clean energy workforce will need to increase by 2030 to meet demand in UK clean energy sectors and their supply chains (where possible, both domestic and global demand has been considered - see Table 1 for details).

Publication Year:

2025

Publisher:

UK Government

DOI:

No DOI minted

Author(s):

Department for Energy Security and Net Zero