
The green skills gap is “both manageable and requiring of active engagement”, according to a panel of industry leaders.
On the final day of Solar Media’s Solar Finance & Investment Europe 2025 conference, CEO of Evoenergy Mark Wakeford noted that the UK is expecting a threefold increase in in solar capacity over the term of this government, something which will require around 60,000 new people to enter the industry.
Tracey Elliot, head of people at rooftop solar firm Eden Sustainable Group, put the emphasis on industry to build skills in the workforce, saying: “The government are really pushing us as an industry to work on this problem ourselves”.
However, a significant number of people are simply unaware of green skills or the career opportunities in the sector. According to a recent report by the Learning and Work Institute, 87% of young people aged between 16-24 have no idea about green skills, to which Elliot noted: “we have to get out there into schools and tell young people that there is a really bright future in renewables”.
Additionally, some of the data used for the calculation of demand for green jobs is not as useful as it could be. According to Andrew Eldred, chief operating officer at trade group the Electrical Contractors Association, much of the data used to calculate the number of green jobs currently unfilled comes from online skills boards such as LinkedIn, but many small businesses don’t use these kind of sites, which Eldred notes “significantly skews” the data.
Eldred spoke to our sister publication PV Tech about these challenges earlier this year, added today that he believes the skills system is “suboptimal”, with apprenticeships not being properly funded, and funding being unhelpfully skewed towards classroom-based further education learning rather than apprenticeships that include more practical training.
He said: “Industry does not have the right level of input and influence on the skills system as it should have—the Department for Education needs to listen to us more to boost green skills”.
According to Elliot, setting qualification standards is a key question for the industry. She stated: “In terms of qualifications, that’s the challenge for the industry—we don’t have standard routes to competency laid out. That’s what we need to do first, and then we need to go out into colleges and universities to tell them what we need”.
Eldred agreed, adding that there is no point in “pulling a qualification out of thin air” and that the UK should ensure it uses international skill sets and industry input to develop a standard.
Furthermore, the time pressure of decarbonisation means that education providers may have to be flexible and work to adapt currently available training standards to rapidly upskill the workforce. Elliot said: “The challenge is to make a new solar-specific apprenticeship will take too long for 2030 targets. As a result, we’ve had to tweak an existing apprenticeship.” She adds, ” The challenge in our industry is that we’re against the clock—we need to decarbonise now. “
Young people, DEI and the role of developers
On the topic of getting more young people into the industry, Eldred stated: “I think the best thing we can do is really buy into the idea that there is a skills issue, and that projects and developers a have a role to play in fixing it”. He suggested that the idea of an “old-style social clause” should be brought back into vogue, with minimum levels of staffing hours made up by apprentices and work experience employees, in order to compel developers to boost the industry.
Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) remains an issue. Elliot notes that she has been “positively trying” to actively recruit female project managers and other staff, but has been finding it “extremely difficult”, adding that more needs to done to recruit more female university graduates into the solar industry. “We know that we work better when we’re more diverse—we need to be appealing to a more diverse range of people”.
Wakeford concluded the panel by noting that despite the challenges, he “is extremely confident” that the UK will solve the skills issue with experts like the featured panelists, as well as the collaboration of the wider industry.