In
this article in Wind Power Monthly, the magazine interviews Andy Holt, general manager of wind services at US turbine manufacterer GE Renewable Energy, and corporate recruitment consultants Alan and Yorke, and Earthstream. The article reports what they see as the "biggest challenges in recruitment facing the wind industries.
Eddie Halkett, group business development director at EarthStream, sees the biggest challenge to be maintaining a steady pipeline of incoming talent while attracting and training 2.6 million skilled technicians into the industry by 2030 in an industry that has been highly unstable to to inconsistent government support and facing strong steady competition from the oil industry for workers with similar skills.
The greatest recruitment challenge that the wind industry faces relates directly to the factors that have impacted the sector in recent times – how to create a stabilised market, maintaining continuity of projects, financial and political issues and external perceptions regarding the viability of wind as a dependable employment choice.
If the industry achieves its ambitious targets of 30% adoption of wind power by 2030 that could create a projected 560,000 jobs in Europe and 2.6 million globally. The challenge is to establish and preserve a sustainable, international skills market that does not fluctuate and decline as a result of inconsistent investment, political interference and fierce competition from other subsidised energy sources.
Andy Holt, a general manager of GE Renewables, sees attracting and keeping skilled workers to rural and offshore locations where large wind farms are being located as a big challenge.
Often, recruiting for the wind industry is about bringing these high tech jobs to rural communities, which is a unique opportunity for GE and the industry itself.
For every ten wind turbines GE produces, one skilled technician is needed to help maintain and service the turbines. As the wind industry grows globally, we see this as an opportunity to grow high tech jobs in rural places, creating tangible benefits for local economies and populations.
Does anyone else notice a subtly different "feel" about this article compared to most articles we read about wind and solar power? Instead of cutting-edge entrepreneurs with optimistic and maybe even a bit ambitious visions of the vast potential in renewable energy, this article interviews big corporate job recruiters concerned about the pragmatic, almost "run-of-the-mill" labor recruiting obstacles that must be overcome in finding, training, and retaining qualified high skilled turbine technicians over the next two to three decades amidst competition from the fossil fuel industries and the great swings in wind industry investments caused by the inconsistency of government support and regulation.
I interpret this as a positive sign that the industry is maturing. We are no longer debating if solar and wind energy generations will one day be a viable significant contributor to our global energy needs but instead we find major corporate players worrying about how fast our transition to renewable energy will happen and how we will solve implementation, labor, regulatory, and logistic issues to keep the momentum going.
We do not need to be experts in energy economics to see which way this wind is blowing.