Green jobs will suffer through skills gap

A low carbon economy will not be delivered unless the government addresses the UK environmental skills gap, says the UCU university and college lecturers’ union.

UCU environment co-ordinator Graham Petersen told the union’s annual congress at the end of May: “There is huge potential to train apprentices in renewable energy skills, yet college construction departments are being cut back and staff threatened with redundancy.”

The previous Labour government claimed that 500,000 jobs would be created around the clean energy sector. However, UCU says that many of these jobs are going to overseas firms because of a lack of skills and a manufacturing base here.