Addressing the skills gap for facilitating renewable energy entrepreneurship — An analysis of the wind energy sector

Abstract

With the rising global energy issues regarding sustainability, environmental degradation and fossil fuel exhaustion, several countries are now focusing on finding alternative sustainable solutions. At the current state, there are no clear alternatives other than renewable energy sources which have recently led to the increase of entrepreneurial businesses primarily dealing with the advancement and uptake of renewable energy technologies. However, being an under-researched area, there is no clarity on the skills associated with the business models of the renewable energy sector. What are the current trends in terms of the interpersonal, professional and core technical skills that employers are actively seeking in this sector? How will nascent entrepreneurs address the skills gap or subject specific knowledge challenges? Using content analysis, this study reviews online job advertisements to shed some light on the skills distribution in management and technical-oriented roles in the renewable job sector. The study found management-oriented roles to have a more widespread skills parameter in the personal skills category as compared to technical-oriented roles. The professional and technical skills distribution shows technical-oriented jobs seeking a higher rate of subject-specific skills or knowledge than management-oriented roles. The study also found a lack of choices for undergraduate degrees on renewable energy when compared with postgraduate degree choices in the UK. This raises several questions like whether such gaps in subject choices at universities are limiting the entrepreneurial prospects among students. Are these factors fuelling the technical skills deficit currently witnessed in the renewable energy job sector? Perhaps, there is a need for universities to revisit their business and programme design models to investigate whether the undergraduate programmes are being too generic for the 21st century entrepreneurial market?