Report: Over 77,000 trained on-site workers needed in emerging offshore wind markets by 2024

The offshore wind industry will need 77,000 GWO-trained on-site workers to deliver forecast installations in six key emerging markets for offshore wind between 2020-2024, a new report has found.

Published by the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) and Global Wind Organisation (GWO), Powering the Future: Global Offshore Wind Workforce Outlook 2020-2024 provides a qualitative analysis of the workforce training needs required to fulfill offshore market forecasts in North America, China, Taiwan, Japan, Vietnam, and South Korea.

Research determined that 2.5 workers per MW per project are needed to deliver the 31 GW forecast for these six markets.

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 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 51GW of new offshore installations globally by 2024,” Ben Backwell, CEO at GWEC, said.

“The findings in this report are an important tool to match global market trends with local training needs and build a coherent roadmap for thriving offshore wind industries in emerging markets. These markets are moving faster than we have ever seen before, and it is crucial that workforce training keeps up to build a good reputation for the sector and ensure growth opportunities for years to come.”

The Powering the Future report also underscores key workforce supply chain bottlenecks that must be addressed in order to realise these large-scale training needs.

Barriers include a lack of training centres, lack of familiarity with standards and risk of standards being perceived as “imposed” and unreflective of local context.

Additionally, the current COVID-19 crisis will pose a new challenge to both workforce and turbine supply chains to reach the world’s offshore wind ambitions.

“Having a GWO trained workforce is often the missing piece of the puzzle when considering a new offshore wind project in any given market, but this should be seen as a top priority in nascent markets to secure their long-term growth and create thousands of local jobs,” Jakob Lau Holst, CEO at GWO, said.

“GWO already has training centres in China, the US and Taiwan, but we will need to ramp up training centres in these regions drastically to train the necessary workforce of almost 78,000 people. Due to the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, GWO is also rolling out digital training platforms to ensure continuity in training and continue driving forward the global energy transition.”

This report is the first output of GWEC and GWO’s partnership signed in November 2019 and is supported by research partners Renewables Consulting Group.