A report for the Welsh Government on ‘Assessing workforce requirements for home retrofitting in Wales’ shows a shortfall in qualified workers and how this will need to grow over the next 10 years to meet a Net Zero pathway.
The Welsh Government writes:
A Cebr report for the Welsh Government shows a shortfall in qualified workers and how this will need to grow over the next 10 years to meet a Net Zero pathway.
Cebr writes:
Home retrofitting is an essential activity to reduce domestic reliance on high-carbon energy sources, especially for the energy intensive and often inefficient task of heating the home. This report combines assessments of the current retrofit workforce, the labour intensity of the retrofit measures needed, and forecast of likely labour supply in order for the Welsh Government to meet its decarbonisation targets, to estimate the evolution of the gap between supply and demand, over the next decade.
It shows that there is currently a shortfall in relevant qualified workers, and if the Welsh Government is to meet its Net Zero targets, the workforce involved in directly delivering retrofit measures will need to grow significantly over the coming decade. A critical secondary finding is that the retrofit-relevant core labour supply is projected to decline over the forecast period irrespective of demand assumptions, unless additional interventions are introduced. This contraction means that even maintaining current delivery levels will become more challenging over time, while scaling up delivery further exacerbates workforce pressures.
