I spent this morning facilitating a circular economy workshop for the automotive supply chain here in the North East of England. It went fabulously, with everyone leaving with a sizeable to do list and a spring in their step. But what I mulled on as I drove home was the lunchtime discussion on the shortage of production engineers. The development of a new EV battery gigafactory had ratcheted up an already febrile recruitment arms race in the region with relatively junior maintenance engineers almost able to name their own salaries.

In other words, the green jobs are there, we just need more qualified people to do them. The Bloomberg Zero podcast had an interesting recent episode on the green skills shortage, focussing on the efforts of Octopus to train up engineers to install heat pumps. What they were doing was admirable, but a drop in the ocean. And, spoiler alert, Friday’s edition of the Net Zero Business Podcast touches on similar shortages in the nuclear industry, which could well hold back the Government’s plans for a nuclear energy renaissance.

So what do we do?

First of all, many of the missing ‘green skills’ are transferable from traditional industries. Several of the manufacturers complaining about losing maintenance engineers to battery production this morning produce non-drive train vehicle components – a factory is a factory. The oil & gas sector has expertise in offshore installation and maintenance almost directly applicable to offshore wind, along with drilling expertise applicable to geothermal developments. Solar panels and heat pumps require electricians and plumbers. We need to exploit the skills we already have.

Secondly, we need to give up on this crippling obsession against immigration. A mobile, global, skilled workforce can help smooth out local lumps and bumps in skills demand. Remember when Poland joined the EU and suddenly you could actually get a good plumber to turn up and do a good job at a competitive price? Bring back freedom of movement, I say.

Thirdly, we need more incentives for homegrown talent to join the Net Zero workforce. We have a University funding model which is largely student driven. I worked at the University of Teesside when the CSI franchise was top of the TV charts, and the word was we churned out more forensic science graduates than there were vacancies for forensic scientists every year. Surely we should be offering, say, subsidised tuition fees for critical subjects like engineering to incentivise better alignment between supply of and demand for graduates?

Fourthly, while many corporations work hard to grow and develop their talent pool, like Octopus, we obviously need more to do so.

Of course all of this takes time. But these are well paid, high status jobs, literally creating the future of society, and it seems a crying shame not to fill those vacancies.