Comment by Rob Hargraves, Retrofit Skills Advisor at Energy Systems Catapult. 

The skills that we are going to need in the future will look very different to those we have today. Technologies will evolve, as too will our training and regulatory environments. My role is to better understand what skills we will need in the coming years and to identify gaps in the workforce – gaps which could impede our transition to Net Zero.

What do we mean by skills?

Skills, by their very nature, are broad – we need a mixture of skills and knowledge when dealing with consumers. On one hand, of course you need the technical skills to be able to design low-carbon heating systems and install them. But you also need softer skills to be able to explain the new technologies and controls to consumers.

That’s our focus, making sure that those working on retrofit projects – which are complex processes – have a collaborative mix of skills to assess, design, install and monitor retrofit measures, but also to educate and inform consumers on their best options.

Challenges ahead

There are various government funding schemes out there. There’s the Boiler Upgrade Scheme for instance which provides £5,000 towards a heat pump or biomass boiler. But a large majority of the public are unaware of such schemes and additionally, and when there is demand, the workforce and skills aren’t there for people to take advantage of the funding.

Ultimately, there just aren’t enough heat pump installers operating in the UK. The latest figures are around 3,000 and, for where we need to get to, that needs to go up to anywhere between 50-100,000.

If we think of the scale that is required to meet government installation targets, then we desperately need a lot more engineers and lot more people working in retrofit in general. We are potentially missing out on bringing more people into the sector as to a large part of our population it’s not regarded as inclusive or that the jobs are ‘green’ – important to those people who want their work to have a positive environmental impact.

We’re also missing out on a wide range of benefits that comes with having a diverse workforce – such as different perspectives that are brought in, or even that some people might be more comfortable with having a female engineer in their homes.

Missed opportunities

We recently published an in-depth report looking at the lack of diversity within the sector. Only 2% of the engineer workforce are female, which is drastically low, and so our report highlights the barriers to entry, what are the wider issues, and how these might be tackled to see a broader, more diverse workforce – something that is essential to meet Net Zero targets. My colleagues, Danica Caiger-Smith and Vivien Kizilcec have produced a fantastic blog examining these issues in more detail.

Getting to Net Zero

A change in perceptions regarding heat pumps will drastically change the way we see, and deliver, Net Zero by 2050. If we think about electric cars, ten years ago very few people had them but slowly, as new and improved cars arrived in the market the conversation started to shift, and consumers began to see them as an attractive investment. We need a similarly attractive offer for heat pumps that will encourage consumers to switch over.

This will have a big impact because right now you’re essentially asking people to change their heating system to an unfamiliar technology, where there’s a lot of disruption and cost and not necessarily lower running costs. That’s a hard sell and so we need to build a positive consumer offer around the new technology to increase its rollout.

Getting there requires a wholesale change in thinking. It will require us to take a holistic approach. Making sure the skills are there. Making sure the standards are enforced and upheld. Making sure there is an informed customer base. Retrofit can be very complex, due to home disruption and overall cost, but we do need to start building a skilled workforce as quickly as possible to decarbonise.