The European Parliament and the Council have recently reached a provisional agreement to reinforce the Renewable Energy Directive, including by raising the general renewables target to 42.5% by 2030 with an indicative top-up of 2.5%.
A sufficient and adequately skilled workforce will be critical to ensure this accelerated deployment of renewable energy solutions, with the number of people employed in the EU’s renewable energy sector that will have to grow massively to meet the targets of the Renewable Energy Directive.
Lack of skills and an insufficient number of workers in the various segments of renewable energy technologies’ value chains is already perceived as a barrier to investments and is becoming one of the most serious concerns in the industry.
On 21 March 2023, Solar Heat Europe and other relevant trade associations, as well as representatives of installers of clean technologies involved in the work of the Clean Energy Industrial Forum responded to this call, with the support of the European Commission, by launching a partnership that aims to provide workers with the skills needed for the manufacturing, installation, and management of renewable energy technologies to achieve the EU’s energy and climate objectives.
It is against this background that this session is being organised. It will serve as a platform to present the skills partnership and attract new members to it and to discuss skills needs in the EU renewable energy sector and actions needed to ensure that adequate and sufficiently trained professionals are available for a fast, steady, and equitable deployment of clean energy solutions. It will focus on the risks associated with skills shortages in the renewable energy sectors and the impact that this could have on the energy transition, highlighting what the industry is doing to address this challenge and calling on public authorities to adopt the necessary policies to avoid skills shortages.