Scotland must harness skills to become pre-eminent leader in windfarm sector
Michael Meakin-Blackwell · Posted on: May 15th 2024 · read
Scotland is at a critical juncture in the future of renewable energy.
Through targeted moves to harness and retain the skills we have and by embarking on a process to improve supply chains, Scotland can truly be pioneers.
In the Autumn 2023 Budget, the Government announced a £960m fund, ‘The Green Industries Growth Accelerator (GIGA)’, to support the expansion of strong and sustainable clean energy supply chains across the UK, including offshore wind.
ORE Catapult have established the Floating Offshore Wind Centre of Excellence (FOW CoE) to develop an internationally recognised initiative to reduce the cost of energy from floating wind. The centre will accelerate the build-out of floating farms, create opportunities for the UK supply chain, and drive innovations in manufacturing, installation and Operations & Maintenance (O&M).
The news that Green Volt, one of the world’s largest floating windfarms, has been approved off the Aberdeenshire coast, is immensely important for the energy transition in this country. Floating offshore wind brings with it additional engineering difficulties so retaining suitably skilled staff will be especially important.
We concur with Sir Ian Wood’s welcoming of the decision, hailing it a ‘massive boost’ for the region, expected to create hundreds of jobs. It is also predicted to reduce carbon emissions by one million tonnes per year.
As well as the resulting impact of this pivotal project, it also serves as a significant, wider signal that Scotland can be leaders in this field.
It starts now with projects like this. Oil and gas will keep people here for a period of time but there will be a natural drop-off.
A recent estimate showed UK offshore wind sector jobs could more than triple by 2030 with more than 86,000 positions possible by 2026 and more than 100,000 by 2030. Skills gaps are growing but the East of Scotland in particular can be key in closing this.
Stats say that 90% of the employees in the UK oil and gas industry have the skills to transition to offshore wind. That’s great, but what about the other 10% ... why can’t we retrain them too? With the Green Volt windfarm, and projects like this, there will be engineering difficulties, therefore upskilling or the transfer of skills is vital.
There will also be opportunities to become part of the bigger supply chain. Being more robust here is crucial as that was one of the biggest issues during Covid with many projects impacted because of transformer and switch gear delays. We should source the raw materials now because we know these will be needed in the future.
We concur with Sir Ian Wood’s welcoming of the decision, hailing it a ‘massive boost’ for the region, expected to create hundreds of jobs.
We also have an immediate opportunity to leverage the extensive world-class support facilities we have in Scotland – the harbour / deepwater anchorage facilities in Aberdeen and elsewhere on the East coast – from Leith up to Nigg, Cromarty.
Recently in Nigg, two huge installation vessels arrived from The Netherlands to commence the installation of three section turbines which are on the quayside for the Moray West windfarm. We can lead on this. We have shown we have the capabilities for it in the oil and gas industry; we have also seen it in the battery energy storage market where the UK surged to the top.
The supply chain of manufactured products is, however, a cause for concern. According to research by Bloomberg, four of the top five wind turbine manufacturers are based in China. Strong supply chain management will be vital to deliver Net Zero targets, as we have already seen the significant impacts on the supply chain from Covid and other global issues such as the war on Ukraine.
Even if we aren’t making the components ourselves, it’s about where that supply chain comes from - having that clean and secure supply chain is vital.
Just this month, National Grid launched the Great Grid Partnership, which named seven partners to support the delivery of an initial nine Accelerated Strategic Transmission Investment (ASTI) projects. These projects are part of The Great Grid Upgrade, which is building new electricity network infrastructure to connect 50GW of offshore wind by 2030.
What we have here now are the skills and the people. It’s about harnessing what we do have rather than creating something from scratch. It’s easier to improve on what we’ve done before and in turn keep that resource.
Scotland is crucial to the energy transition. Skilled labour is key ... we have it, and we need to keep it.
When staff have worked on something technically difficult in the past, putting them in a job of less complexity isn’t of as much interest and you will probably cause some natural attrition. However, having the largest floating windfarm will come with engineering technical difficulties that will attract the higher calibre staff from the area and to the area.
The fact that this development will power the oil & gas industry initially could win over sceptics about greener routes to energy. People in the industry appreciate that you can’t just switch oil & gas off ... it’s unreasonable to expect that given how reliant we remain on it. What you can do is put in place mitigations to improve the performance of it and this will be part of that.
What we have here now are the skills and the people. It’s about harnessing what we do have rather than creating something from scratch. It’s easier to improve on what we’ve done before and in turn keep that resource. Because, let’s be honest, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands aren’t that far away and so, quite easily we could lose our whole supply chain if we’re not delivering on innovative projects.
These offshore projects are highly skilled, especially in the North Sea with weather conditions and the complexities that can bring.
We can’t replace, retrain and reskill inexperienced people quickly enough so, therefore, we must retain who we already have.
In doing so, there is no reason why we can’t become the pre-eminent lead in the world.
