Skills and the 2020 Challenge

The UK gas and electricity transmission and distribution
sector supports the promotion of renewable power,
in order to tackle climate change and enhance
security of energy supply.

The task of meeting the ambitious EU target of 20%
of energy from renewable resources by 2020 involves
huge planning and techno-economic challenge for the networks.

Although there is no magic bullet when it comes to renewables,
paramount to the UK successfully meeting its share of the EU Renewable Energy target will be the right skills environment.

The large-scale network development to accommodate renewable energy will require a substantial increase in qualified and skilled workers to build and operate the new infrastructure.

There is a need for innovative and highly qualified engineers to design new systems that push at the boundaries of network technology.

As a responsible industry, our members are actively involved through the Sector Skills Council (EU Skills) in collectively looking at the skilled resource challenges for the sector.

We need to make the networks sector more ‘career attractive' to young people and ensure that we have good, and experienced, academic and sector specific trainers.