Solar Power Portal hears from industry executives about how the UK can build up the workforce needed to achieve its 2030 clean power goals.
July 10, 2025
Ensuring we have the workforce needed to complete the targeted buildout of solar, wind and other technologies is often highlighted as one of the biggest challenges in achieving the UK's 2030/50 clean power targets, alongside creating the right investment signals and upgrading grid infrastructure.
Speakers from last week's Clean Power 2030 Summits shared their views with Solar Power Portal, following the summits. The event combined the UK Solar Summit, the Wind Power Finance & Investment Summit and the Green Hydrogen Summit to discuss the UK's roadmap to a 95% clean energy grid by 2030. Solar Power Portal covered it extensively, including rolling coverage of Day One and Day Two.
Read on for responses from executives from trade bodies British Solar Renewables and UK Warehousing Association, developer Telis Energy, solar manufacturer JA Solar, apprenticeships and vocational training provider JTL and industry-led workforce and skills body Energy & Utility Skills Group.
Fran Button, deputy CEO, British Solar Renewables(BSR): Reaching the UK’s 2030 and 2050 targets depends on a skilled, growing workforce. At BSR, we’re building that from the ground up.
We offer a wide range of entry-level roles that give people a route into renewables, even without prior experience. By learning from experienced colleagues, they gain the skills needed to build lasting careers while supporting the sector’s growth.
We actively engage with students and graduates, so they know who we are and what we offer before they enter the job market. Alongside this, we support development through apprenticeships, formal training and ongoing learning opportunities for our existing team.
We also know that diversity is key to long-term success. Through school outreach and attending recruitment events like Solar & Storage Live, we’re working to make the industry more inclusive and accessible to all.
Workforce development isn’t a side project for us. It’s central to how we build long-term impact for our business, our sector and the energy transition.
Chris Claydon, CEO, JTL: Shortages of skilled tradespeople threaten the government’s missions, from achieving 2030 and 2050 decarbonisation targets to building data centres, homes and national infrastructure. Central to these plans, but often overlooked in workforce strategies, are qualified electricians and plumbers.
Demand for these skilled trades is already high, their work includes retrofitting homes and expanding our EV charging network, and that demand will only grow. For example, a new HS2 station alone will need 1,200 electricians. Yet the electrical workforce has shrunk by nearly 20% since 2018 and is projected to fall another 15.4% by 2038, that decline despite more electricians entering apprenticeship training each year.
These are highly regulated, safety-critical industries in which the highest quality training is essential. Apprenticeships remain the industry’s gold standard route into employment. But progression from classroom-based electrical courses into apprenticeships is under 10%, poor value for public investment. Supporting apprenticeships is the most effective way to build a skilled, sustainable workforce.
JTL, an independent training provider, trains a third of England’s electrical apprentices and 12% of plumbing apprentices. The challenge we see isn’t recruiting apprentices, it’s incentivising employers to take them on and expanding training capacity. As the government’s Solar Roadmap makes clear, qualified electricians are vital to the UK’s green ambitions. We therefore need to see urgent action to allow apprenticeship provision to play its part.
Stephen Barrett, director of membership and strategic engagement, Energy & Utility Skills Group: Developing the workforce required to deliver on CP30 will require some innovative thinking and collaboration from all quarters, including: regulators, industry, the skills eco system and, of course, the future workforce.
Regulators need to provide certainty by minimising the use of mechanisms that discourage long-term investment in apprenticeships and graduate programmes.
Industry need to continue to invest in skills both from a supply chain perspective and asset owners, to continue a strong pipeline of skilled resources entering industry, whilst preventing unsustainable salary escalation and increased project delivery costs.
Skills delivery and funding should be targeted at skills related to the government's missions to ensure prioritisation on the critical needs evolving. The future workforce need to understand the career opportunities and the opportunity to be part of an industry that will be crucial to the UK delivering net zero.
Claire Bottle, CEO, UK Warehousing Association(UKWA): We need a national skills strategy aligned with decarbonisation targets, including expanding apprenticeships, upskilling programmes and technical college offerings in renewable energy and grid technologies.
Collaboration with industry to ensure training matches real-world needs, and making these careers attractive with good pay and progression opportunities, will be vital to avoid bottlenecks in workforce availability. More broadly, UKWA’s focus on the workforce needs of the warehousing sector is critical to the supply chains that underpin renewable deployment.
Spokesperson for JA Solar: The government has launched the Clean Energy Workforce Strategy within the wider Clean Energy Industries sector plan which states greater investment in skills and training—a focus on technical training is essential. A focus on strategic sectors with high growth potential such as solar, wind and carbon capture.
The goal is to direct industrial investment into communities where these projects are being built to energise investment into towns that are lacking this and help rebuild these towns. The deployment of this technology is reliant on public and private investment.
William Duncan, CEO, Telis Energy: The UK has the infrastructure to grow the workforce. Big energy companies have the systems and facilities. We should tap into this.
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