The Experience Gap: Ireland’s Renewable Energy Workforce

The people, skills and experience behind Ireland’s clean energy ambitions

Ireland’s renewable energy sector is growing rapidly. But delivering the infrastructure needed for the energy transition depends on more than technology, investment and ambition. It depends on people.

Solar Ireland’s first Renewable Energy Workforce & Skills Report, The Experience Gap, explores the workforce needed to support the continued growth of renewable energy in Ireland and the recruitment challenges employers are already experiencing.

Developed from Solar Ireland’s Renewable Energy Workforce & Skills Survey, delivered with Collins McNicholas Recruitment & HR Services Group, the report brings together the experiences of organisations working across solar, wind, storage and the wider renewable energy sector.

Why the experience gap?

One finding emerged particularly strongly from the research: employers are not only finding particular skills difficult to recruit. They are finding experience even harder to find.

Renewable energy projects need people who understand how to take complex infrastructure from development through planning, grid, construction and commissioning into operation. That kind of experience takes time to build.

The report looks at what that means for a fast-growing industry, particularly as employers expect their workforce requirements to continue increasing over the coming years.

It also asks an important question: if employers need experienced people, how do we give more people the opportunity to gain that experience?

Building the workforce alongside the infrastructure

The Experience Gap explores the roles employers are finding most difficult to recruit, how well current education and training pathways are meeting industry needs, the experience of smaller employers, regional workforce challenges and the continuing importance of international expertise. But it also looks beyond the immediate recruitment challenge.

There isn’t one route into renewable energy. Ireland will need engineers and electricians, but the energy transition also needs project managers, planners, environmental specialists, technicians, commercial and finance professionals, policy expertise and people bringing valuable experience from other industries.

That creates an opportunity to make careers in renewable energy more visible and to build stronger pathways into the sector through apprenticeships, further and higher education, graduate programmes, industry placements, professional development and career transition.

From insight to action

The report is intended to start a wider conversation between industry, Government and education and training providers about how Ireland develops the workforce needed for the next stage of the energy transition.

Training and education remain an important part of that. But one of the clearest messages from the research is that we also need to think about what happens between learning and doing.

How do we give more people opportunities to build practical experience on real renewable energy projects? How do we create stronger connections between education, training and industry? And how do we help people with valuable experience in other sectors make the move into renewable energy?

There is no single answer, and no one part of the system can solve the challenge alone.

Industry has a role in creating opportunities for people to gain meaningful experience. Education and training providers need strong connections with a rapidly changing sector. And Government can help create the conditions and supports that allow those pathways to grow.

Solar Ireland wants to use The Experience Gap as a starting point for that conversation, bringing Government, industry and education and training providers together to explore what comes next.

Building both

Ireland has strong education and training. We have talented people who want to build careers. And we have a renewable energy industry that needs them.

The opportunity now is to build a stronger bridge between learning and experience.

As Ireland builds more renewable generation, grid infrastructure, storage and electrification, we also need to build the workforce that will design, develop, construct, connect and operate it.

Ireland’s energy transition is a huge infrastructure project.

It’s also a huge people project.

Let’s build both.

Download the report: The Experience Gap: Ireland’s Renewable Energy Workforce