The offshore wind industry will need over 77,000 trained on-site workers to fulfill 2020-2024 market forecasts in North America, China, Taiwan, Japan, Vietnam, and South Korea – or 2.5 persons per MW per project, according to the Future: Global Offshore Wind Workforce Outlook 2020-2024 report published by the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) and the GWO.
Having a trained workforce based on GWO standards is necessary to ensure the health and safety of workers, secure the long-term sustainability of the sector, create thousands of local jobs and power the global energy transition.
The impacts of COVID-19 on both the workforce and turbine supply chain are yet to be fully quantified, although GWEC Market Intelligence expects there to be minor impacts for the markets highlighted in the report. The GWO has begun rolling out digital training platforms to continue training the workforce during the crisis.
The research was built upon GWO training data and GWEC Market Intelligence forecasts, combined with data from Renewables Consulting Group’s GRIP database and a series of industry interviews.
The report also underscores key workforce supply chain bottlenecks that must be addressed in order to realize these large-scale training needs. Barriers include a lack of training centers, lack of familiarity with standards and risk of standards being perceived as “imposed” and unreflective of local context.
“The offshore wind industry is growing exponentially and there is no doubt that it will become a major driver of the energy transition across the world, with GWEC Market Intelligence forecasting 51 GW of new offshore installations globally by 2024,” says Ben Backwell, CEO of GWEC.
“The enthusiasm for offshore wind is strong with investors and policy makers alike as more and more ambitious targets are put in place, but we need a trained workforce ready to realize these goals,” he adds.
This report is the first output of GWEC and GWO’s partnership signed in November 2019.
To read the full report, click here.
This amount of growth is stunning to me. I’m leaving the US Coast Guard after 25 years of service this summer. 77,000 new hires in almost the size of two entire Coast Guards. It’s crazy.