Predicting workforce requirements for energy efficiency and electrification from energy scenarios

Abstract

The energy efficiency and electrification workforce will play a crucial role in the energy transition across all sectors, as reaching net zero requires simultaneously reducing energy intensity and increasing the proportion of electricity in final demand. The ability to plan for this critical workforce is hampered by a lack of information on workforce scale, occupational shares, and required skills. This research pilots a method to create workforce projections using outputs from standard energy models. The approach uses the petajoules of energy efficiency (reduction of electricity and other fuels) and petajoules of electrification (increased electricity demand resulting from switching to electricity) from the AusTIMES model as a data input to determine employment in energy efficiency and electrification to 2040 for Australia. This workforce has not previously been projected directly from energy scenarios, and the study establishes that an employment factor methodology is practicable to achieve this. Further effort is required to provide the sector-by-sector detail for occupational characterisation of these workforce(s). The AusTIMES data enables projections for the incremental workforce, and the study presents estimates of the associated baseline workforce to illustrate the importance of exploring this relationship in the future. Occupational classifications, further detailed employment factors, and the ratio between incremental and baseline workforce is the subject of further research. It would be beneficial to explore with researchers, government and industry what is most urgent to enable workforce planning, and to expand the research to determine which employment indicators are common across jurisdictions.