Day 12 of 1415 minutes

Day 12: Jobs, Skills & Just Transition

Green jobs, skills gaps, and ensuring a fair transition

Learning Objectives

  • Understand the scale of the green jobs opportunity in the UK and which sectors and regions stand to benefit most.
  • Appreciate the skills gaps that threaten to slow the transition and the programmes being developed to address them.
  • Grasp the concept of a 'just transition' and why ensuring fairness for workers and communities is both a moral imperative and a practical necessity.

The Green Jobs Opportunity

The energy transition is often framed as a cost — and it does require enormous investment. But it's also one of the largest economic opportunities of the 21st century. Building wind farms, manufacturing heat pumps, installing EV chargers, retrofitting homes, restoring peatlands, and developing smart grid software all require workers. Lots of them.

Estimates vary, but the government's Green Jobs Taskforce (2021) suggested that up to 480,000 skilled jobs could be supported in green industries by 2030. The CCC's Sixth Carbon Budget analysis estimated that the transition could create hundreds of thousands of net new jobs across the UK economy, with employment in low-carbon sectors more than offsetting job losses in fossil fuel industries.

Some of the fastest-growing areas include:

Offshore wind. The Offshore Wind Sector Deal (2019) set an ambition for the UK offshore wind industry to support 60,000 jobs by 2030, including in manufacturing, installation, and operations and maintenance. Major employment clusters are developing around the Humber, Teesside, and north-east Scotland.

Building retrofit and heat pump installation. Decarbonising 28 million homes (as discussed on Day 7) requires a massive workforce of insulation installers, heat pump engineers, electricians, and project managers. Industry estimates suggest around 200,000–250,000 additional construction and retrofit workers will be needed.

Electric vehicles and battery manufacturing. The Nissan plant in Sunderland and the planned Envision AESC gigafactory nearby are significant employers. The government has supported further battery manufacturing investment, and EV-related jobs span manufacturing, charging infrastructure, and vehicle servicing.

Nature-based solutions. Peatland restoration, woodland creation, and biodiversity net gain (from Day 9) create rural employment opportunities in areas that often have limited alternatives.

The government's Green Jobs Taskforce estimated that up to 480,000 skilled jobs could be supported in green industries by 2030 — spanning energy, construction, transport, and nature restoration.

The Skills Gap: The Transition's Bottleneck

The jobs opportunity is real, but there's a critical constraint: skills. The UK doesn't currently have enough trained workers to deliver the transition at the speed required. This is already visible on the ground.

Heat pump installers. The UK had fewer than 5,000 trained heat pump installers as of 2023 — a fraction of what's needed to hit 600,000 installations per year. Training a heat pump engineer takes time, and the current training infrastructure (further education colleges, manufacturer programmes, the Microgeneration Certification Scheme) is not scaling fast enough.

Electricians and grid workers. The electrification of heating and transport will massively increase demand for qualified electricians. The grid itself needs thousands of additional engineers, planners, and construction workers to deliver network upgrades. National Grid has estimated that the energy sector as a whole will need to recruit approximately 400,000 new workers by 2050.

Retrofit coordinators. The whole-house retrofit approach — assessing a building, specifying a package of measures, managing the work, and verifying the outcome — requires a new role that barely exists at scale in the UK: the retrofit coordinator. A PAS 2035 standard has been established for this, but training and certification are still ramping up.

The skills gap is arguably the single biggest risk to the pace of the UK's energy transition. Without enough trained people, targets will be missed regardless of how much money is spent or how good the technology is.

Regional Dimensions: Where the Jobs Are (and Aren't)

The geography of the green jobs transition matters. Many of the biggest opportunities are concentrated in regions that have historically been associated with heavy industry and fossil fuels — the North East, Humber, Teesside, South Wales, and central Scotland. This is partly because these areas have the port infrastructure, industrial skills, and coastal locations suited to offshore wind, and partly because of deliberate government policy to direct green investment toward 'levelling up' priority areas.

This creates a genuine opportunity for economic renewal. Teesside, for example, has attracted investment in offshore wind manufacturing, hydrogen production, and carbon capture — reusing industrial infrastructure that was once associated with steel and petrochemicals. The Humber region is positioning itself as the UK's 'Energy Estuary', with wind turbine manufacturing at Siemens Gamesa's blade factory in Hull and Associated British Ports' investment in green port facilities.

But the distribution is uneven. Not every community will benefit equally. Rural areas involved in nature restoration may see new opportunities, but these tend to be lower-paid. Former coal mining communities — which largely transitioned out of coal decades ago — have often not yet seen the economic renewal they were promised. The transition creates new centres of economic activity, but it can also leave some areas behind.

The Humber and Teesside regions are emerging as major centres for green industry — including offshore wind manufacturing, hydrogen production, and carbon capture — building on existing industrial skills and infrastructure.

Just Transition: Fairness as a Design Principle

The concept of a just transition recognises that the shift to a low-carbon economy creates winners and losers, and that fairness must be consciously designed in. It originated in the trade union movement and has been adopted by the ILO, the Paris Agreement, and the UK Government.

A just transition means several things in practice. Workers in declining fossil fuel industries should have access to retraining, income support, and new employment opportunities. Communities that host energy infrastructure — wind farms, grid upgrades, heat pump manufacturing — should share in the economic benefits. The costs of the transition should not disproportionately fall on lower-income households (as we discussed in the context of fuel poverty on Day 7 and transport on Day 8).

Scotland has been a leader in this area. The Scottish Government established a Just Transition Commission in 2019, which published recommendations covering employment support, community engagement, and the role of social enterprise. Its work has influenced the design of Scotland's energy strategy and its approach to decommissioning North Sea oil and gas.

At the UK level, the government's North Sea Transition Deal (2021) set out a framework for managing the decline of oil and gas production while supporting workers to transition into clean energy roles. But implementation has been uneven, and trade unions — including the Offshore Energies UK workforce, GMB, and Unite — have called for more concrete action on retraining, wage parity, and job guarantees.

The 'just' part of just transition is not a nice-to-have. If the transition is perceived as unfair — if energy workers lose their livelihoods without adequate support, or if communities bear the costs of infrastructure without sharing the benefits — political support for climate action will erode. Designing for fairness is both a moral and a strategic imperative.

Key Takeaway

The green economy offers a major jobs opportunity — potentially hundreds of thousands of new roles by 2030 — but realising it depends on closing acute skills gaps (especially in heat pumps, retrofit, and grid work) and ensuring the transition is fair to the workers and communities most affected by change.

Quick-Fire Recap

  • Up to 480,000 skilled green jobs could be supported by 2030, spanning wind, retrofit, EVs, and nature restoration.
  • The UK had fewer than 5,000 trained heat pump installers in 2023, against a target of 600,000 installations per year by 2028.
  • National Grid has estimated the energy sector will need approximately 400,000 new workers by 2050.
  • Major green industry clusters are forming in the Humber, Teesside, and north-east Scotland.
  • A just transition requires deliberate policy to support workers in declining industries, share benefits with hosting communities, and avoid disproportionate costs for low-income households.

Reflection Prompt

If you were responsible for designing a retraining programme for workers transitioning from oil and gas into clean energy, what would you prioritise to make it effective and attractive to participants?

Sources & Further Reading

  1. UK Government, "Green Jobs Taskforce Report", BEIS, July 2021. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/green-jobs-taskforce-report
  2. Climate Change Committee, "Sixth Carbon Budget – The UK's Path to Net Zero", CCC, December 2020.
  3. UK Government, "Offshore Wind Sector Deal", BEIS, March 2019. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/offshore-wind-sector-deal
  4. National Grid, "Building the Net Zero Energy Workforce", National Grid, 2024. https://www.nationalgrid.com/
  5. UK Government, "North Sea Transition Deal", BEIS, March 2021. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/north-sea-transition-deal
  6. Scottish Government, "Just Transition Commission", Scottish Government, 2021. https://www.gov.scot/groups/just-transition-commission/
  7. Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit, "Net Zero Workforce", ECIU, 2024. https://eciu.net/
  8. Construction Industry Training Board, "Net Zero and Construction", CITB, 2023. https://www.citb.co.uk/

Through a Product Designer's Lens

The skills gap is a service design and product design challenge in its own right. Current pathways into green trades — heat pump installation, retrofit coordination, EV maintenance — are often fragmented, slow, and poorly signposted. There's a significant opportunity for digital platforms that map career pathways from existing roles (e.g. gas engineer → heat pump installer), aggregate training providers, and help workers understand the qualifications, timelines, and earning potential of green careers. Think of it as a 'green skills marketplace' — similar to how platforms like Coursera or LinkedIn Learning work, but tailored to the specific certification and practical training requirements of the energy transition.

From a data and metrics perspective, how would you measure the success of a just transition? Traditional metrics like 'number of jobs created' are insufficient — they don't capture job quality, wage levels, geographic accessibility, or whether the people who lost fossil fuel jobs are the ones getting the new green ones. Designing a just transition dashboard — tracking not just headcount but wages, retention, diversity, geographic distribution, and community sentiment — is a meaningful product challenge.

The ethical design dimension is central. Products and services aimed at workers in transition must be designed with empathy for people who may be anxious about their future, sceptical of promises, and dealing with real financial pressure. User research with affected communities — not just desk-based persona creation — is essential.

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