Meeting Scotland's workforce needs for a transition to Net Zero – the role of migration and the impact of demographic challenges.

2. Understanding and assessing workforce needs

The first practical challenge in assessing the labour and skills needs for the transition to Net Zero relates to estimating how many jobs will be needed, when, where and with which specific skills. Much in this respect depends on the scale and speed of private and public investments and domestic and international policies with regards to both energy transition and broader net zero activities including carbon capture, nature preservation and new standards and practices in other areas of industry, as well as policy decisions regarding taxes, licensing and other economic considerations.

2.1. The challenge of predicting numbers of ‘green jobs’

For the reasons outlined above, predictions of future workforce demand in the green economy vary considerably. Predictions for the number of new jobs that could be created across the UK in low-carbon sectors by 2030 have varied between 135,000 and 725,000 (Climate Change Committee, 2023).The most recent UK Government estimates are even more optimistic, claiming that there will be 860,000 clean energy jobs across the UK by 2030, 55,000-60,000 of which could be located in Scotland (Clean Energy Jobs Plan, 2025). Focusing more specifically on the energy transition, the National Grid estimates a need for almost 50,000 jobs in Scotland by 2050 (Scottish Development International, 2021). Analysis by the Energy Transition Institute predicts that Scotland’s offshore energy workforce alone could sit at between 45,000 and 100,000 by 2030, compared to its present figure of 75,000, although the estimates of shares of these jobs that are in renewables vary considerably (Robert Gordon University, 2025).

Predictions are further complicated by the lack of a clear consensus amongst researchers or policymakers on how to define green jobs (see Apostel and Barslund, 2024 for an international review). Most UK estimates rely on datasets involving Standard Industrial Classifications that do not contain a separate category for ‘renewables’ (Skills Development Scotland, 2024). Assessments of current and future green energy labour and skills needs are thus prone to the risk of considerable under or over estimation (Zemanik, 2023). The figures contained in the recent UK Government Clean Energy Jobs Plan, for example, are based on an ‘experimental approach^[10] [meaning that] there is inherent uncertainty in estimating the size of the 2030 clean energy workforce’ (Clean Energy Jobs Plan, Technical Annex, 2025: 4).

The Office for National Statistics (2021, 2025) and Skills Development Scotland (2024) have been exploring how best to measure green jobs. It has been proposed that the Scottish Government should proactively work with industry to create a standardised jobs taxonomy in order to identify better the future labour and skills needs of the low carbon industry and to help ensure that they are met (Ernst and Young, 2023).

Since 2022, Skills Development Scotland has used an inclusive definition of “green jobs” (Rubio et al, 2022) covering three categories:

1. Enhanced Skills & Knowledge. Existing roles where the skills mix is changing to include “green” elements (e.g. electricians upskilling for renewables).
2. Increased Demand. Jobs that are already “green” but are seeing growth in demand due to the net zero transition (e.g. wind turbine technicians and environmental engineers).
3. New & Emerging. Entirely new roles being created to meet climate targets or support the green economy (e.g. carbon capture specialists).

Researchers at Warwick Institute for Employment Research have developed an experimental green occupational definition (greensoc) along similar lines, which they then apply to Labour Force Survey data and information scraped from online job vacancies (Rubio et al 2022). This definition includes both jobs that are labelled ‘purist’ green jobs and those jobs that are recognised as greening i.e. economic activities related to reducing the use of fossil fuels, decreasing pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, increasing the efficiency of energy use, recycling materials, and development and adopting renewable sources of energy. Based on this expansive definition of green jobs, they find that as many as two-fifths of jobs in Scotland already fall under this category (see Figure 1 below). However, only a minority of jobs in Scotland (4.3% or around 100,000 roles) are ‘new and emerging’ green jobs, such as solar system technicians. A much larger share of jobs (25.7%) are more tenuously green in that the requirements of the transition to Net Zero results in changes to the work and worker requirements of existing occupations, such as architects. A final tenth (9.9%) of jobs in Scotland might be classed as green under this definition in that the transition to Net Zero is stimulating demand in existing occupations, for example, increased demand for electrical power line installers and repairers related to energy efficiency and infrastructure upgrades. These estimates are displayed in Figure 1 below, which helpfully illustrates the three main broader labour market effects of the green transition, in terms of the quantities and general types of green jobs that it might produce.

Source: Rubio et al, 2022.

Caution is nonetheless needed with these broad estimates. A different analysis using similar categories for green jobs to those listed above, and again quantifying them using the Labour Force Survey, estimates a much lower share of ‘green’ employment (at the UK scale in this case): 17 per cent of jobs in 2019 (5% new and emerging, 7% enhanced skills and 5% increased demand (Valero et al, 2021). Taking a somewhat different approach, a study of green jobs across 30 OECD countries, classified green tasks at occupation level, scoring each occupation by the share of its work tasks that are environmentally relevant (energy efficiency, pollution reduction, waste, and renewables). Jobs are classified as “green” if 10 percent or more of their tasks are green. Using this methodology, the study determined that around 23.7% of jobs in Scotland are green (OECD, 2023).

2.2. Skills shortages and competition for labour

The other side of this conundrum is understanding the extent of available labour to fill these jobs. The UK (and especially Scotland’s) workforce is ageing, generating labour and skills shortages in general. Acute skills challenges anticipated across clean energy sectors include STEM, digitisation, non-technical skills such as leadership and management, as well as specialist and niche sector-specific skills such as skills for electrification and heat pump installation (UK Government, 2024).

Researchers have aimed to map the likely extent of specific skills gaps by measuring demand against availability (understood as difficulty to recruit). Figure 2 shows a heatmap of critical occupations across power and energy network sectors. This was produced using quantitative data on workforce demand and qualitative data from stakeholders’ views on the difficulty of obtaining workers with the required skills (UK Government, 2024). Areas of greatest demand and highest challenges for recruitment are clustered in the top right hand corner, and include welders, mechanical trades and engineers.

Please note that L refers to skills level, which refers to The Regulated Qualifications Framework (RQF) used across England, Wales, and Northern Ireland.

Source: UK Government, 2024: 21.

In an effort to ensure that Britain has the skilled workforce in core energy and net zero sectors critical to meeting its Clean Energy Mission, the UK Government’s Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) established The Office for Clean Energy Jobs, in March 2025. Recent analysis by DESNZ has identified ten key occupations needed in the clean energy sector by 2030, which consist of a range of technical, professional, and innovative roles. Figure 3 outlines the 2030 workforce projections for the top 10 occupational groups, which it is estimated together will account for 86% of direct clean energy jobs in 2030 (UK Government, 2025: 18).

Source: UK Government, Clean Energy Jobs Plan, 2025

A more detailed list of 31 expected priority occupations and their associated increases in demand by 2030 is also provided. Plumbers and heating and ventilating installers and repairers top this list, closely followed by carpenters and joiners and electricians and electrical fitters (UK Government 2025: 20).

Many of these occupations are also in demand from other sectors experiencing similar human capital challenges, for example chemical or traditional energy sectors, construction, agriculture, and fisheries. Meanwhile, the UK and Scotland share many of the same challenges and concerns faced by other countries in securing the workforce needed to successfully deliver a green transition. This context creates both internal and international competition for the labour and skills required for the transition to Net Zero. In responding to such challenges, training opportunities (for education leavers and those in brown jobs) and talent attraction mobility measures require careful targeting and planning.

2.3. Scotland

Scotland is perhaps best placed of all UK nations and regions to benefit from the transition to a green economy (Oxford Economics, 2021), and has potential to show international leadership in this area (SDS, 2021). Scotland has both a large volume of low-carbon energy capacity already in place and a strong supply of skilled workers who could enable the transition to clean energy production (Zemanik, 2023). The energy sector accounts for around 4 per cent of Scotland’s total economic output, however the economic contribution of the sector has decreased over the past decade. The energy sector workforce grew by only 0.4 per cent over the decade 2014-2024, whilst Scotland’s overall workforce grew by 3.8 per cent during the same period. Whilst caution is required with projections, over the period 2027-34, the energy sector workforce is forecast to fall by 4.2 per cent (3,700 jobs) (SDS, 2024). Such decline is connected to structural changes within Scotland’s oil and gas sector, which means that Scotland, and North East Scotland in particular, has much at stake in the green transition.

When considering the three routes to filling labour and skills needs for the transition to Net Zero (training new recruits; re-training and upskilling existing energy workers; promoting and supporting geographical labour mobility) the transfer of existing energy workers into the green sector appears at first glance to offer significant potential, especially in the short-term. Making changes to educational structures can take considerable time, whilst the outcomes in real terms of both training programmes and international recruitment can be hard to predict or control. It should be noted that Scotland’s (and the wider-UK’s) already well-established but declining conventional energy sector already contains many of the skills needed for the green transition. It is estimated that as many as 90 per cent of the UK’s existing energy workforce already possess skills with medium to high transferability to the green sector (Offshore Energies UK, 2023). Of course this does not mean that these workers would immediately be able to step into green jobs with no additional training. In a successful transition, approximately three in five people in the current offshore energy workforce could support the renewables industry by 2030 (Energy Transition Institute, 2023), however, substantial challenges remain.

The demographic profile of Scotland’s existing brown jobs workforce is ageing, male dominated and geographically concentrated. At the same time, the green sector will need a more diverse and spatially diffuse workforce to meet its skills needs. The need to undergo re-certification and acquire domain-specific knowledge may present a significant barrier, especially to an ageing workforce, potentially reluctant to undergo retraining or to move to the locations where new green job opportunities become available. Both young people leaving education and geographically mobile workers will be needed to supplement the sectoral mobility of existing energy workers from brown to green jobs.

Another significant concern relates to how the location, quantity and quality of green jobs will compare to the brown jobs where most energy workers currently work. Scotland’s low-carbon energy sector already has an established economic footprint. In 2019, this sector supported over 19,000 direct and indirect jobs and contributed £2.9 billion to Scotland’s economy - 0.8% of total employment and 1.6% of GDP respectively (Ernst and Young, 2023). Scotland had the highest regional proportion (16%) of UK clean energy adverts over the period 2021-24. However, green employment is relatively evenly distributed across the UK and is certainly not concentrated in Scotland (See Valero et al, 2021, page 3 for map of green employment shares across the UK’s regions). This is in stark contrast to the much more geographically concentrated spatial patterning of brown jobs (See Fig 4, showing that 43% of the UK’s oil and gas jobs are located in Scotland). This aspect of the green transition might be seen in a positive light in that it will generate employment opportunities across the country, reducing pressure on particular localities in terms of housing and other public provisions. However, it may present net losses of economic activity and jobs for those areas that have for many decades thrived as centres of non-renewable energy production, including North East Scotland.

Source: OffShore Energies UK, 2023.

Furthermore, there are likely to be time lags and imprecise geographical alignment between the decline of brown jobs and the growth of green jobs to replace them. In offshore wind for example, 80% of UK projects in construction or installation between 2025 and 2030 are forecast to be outside of Scotland. ScotWind, INTOG and other key Scottish-based projects are scheduled to come online only in the early 2030s (Robert Gordon University, 2025: 21-22). There is understandable concern amongst oil and gas workers about a ‘cliff edge’ scenario whereby a rapid decline in brown jobs does not happen in sync with a growth in the quantity and quality, or location, of green jobs that are needed to replace them. The evidence base remains limited in this respect, but it is plausible to assume that such factors may result in a loss of skilled workers from the ageing but highly qualified oil and gas sector, either through early retirement, transfer out of the energy sector or into either brown or green jobs overseas or elsewhere within the UK (See also section 3.1. below).

A final issue is the perceived ‘quality’ and security of jobs, which are linked to the nature of the work required as well as to pay and working conditions (See section 3.3 below). Some of the most promising estimates of the volume of jobs to be created by the transition to Net Zero include temporary roles in the construction of green infrastructure, with fewer permanent roles involved in its subsequent operation (Just Transition Commission, 2025). This poses significant challenges not only with regard to the retraining and transfer of an existing energy workforce. It also indicates a critical need for long-sighted planning and consideration of lifelong career prospects for younger people recruited to new training or apprenticeship programmes.

2.4. North East Scotland

Key concerns facing North East Scotland are (a) whether the energy transition will engender a sufficient quantity and quality of green jobs to replace declining brown jobs and (b) how many of the green jobs will actually be located in the region. Whilst the North East is host to only about a tenth of jobs in Scotland, its role in oil and gas extraction has for many decades made it the operational hub of Scotland’s (and the UK’s) energy sector, reaping considerable financial dividends in the process. However, in recent years the region has been vulnerable to the decline of oil and gas extraction in the North Sea.

Mean household incomes and employment rates in North East Scotland remain above the national UK average, but there has been a weakening of the region’s labour market since the mid-2010s. The biggest falls in average earnings have been in Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire and employment rates there have also declined relative to the rest of the UK when comparing statistics for 2013-15 to those for 2020-22 (Phillips et al, 2023).

Almost a third of the UK’s offshore energy workforce is employed in North East Scotland (Robert Gordon University, 2022) and close to 1 in 6 workers in this region are engaged directly or indirectly in offshore energy, rising to nearly 1 in 4 when including induced jobs (Robert Gordon University, 2025). However, only 11 per cent of green job vacancies in Scotland between February 2019 and January 2022 were in this region (Rubio et al, 2022). In contrast, 44 per cent were in South West Scotland.^[11] This represents a considerable challenge specifically for North East Scotland but also for the viability of Scotland’s green energy transition, as it infers a considerable spatial mismatch between the location of new employment opportunities and the workers with the skills needed to take advantage of them.

Alongside this spatial challenge comes the question of timing, as analysts have noted that a decline in brown jobs prior to sufficient replacement roles becoming available in adjacent energy sectors could pose the risk of increased economic inactivity (whether through early retirement or unemployment) in the region and potentially a further loss of working age population as people seek employment elsewhere (Robert Gordon University, 2022).

Demographic Challenges

The broader demographic challenges facing North East Scotland are well documented (Improvement Service, 2025) with outmigration and declines in working age population. Between 2011 and 2022 the population of North East Scotland grew by only 1.5%, much slower than the national average of 2.7%. The population has also been ageing, which will continue to put pressure on the working-age population and dependency ratios in the region. Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire have both seen a fall in their working age populations by 3.9% and 4.1% respectively over the same period. These declining numbers compare with rises in Midlothian (12.9%), Edinburgh city (8.3%) and Glasgow (8.3%) (Improvement Service, 2025).

Population projections (NRS, 2025), accounting for the combined effect of plausible future migration, fertility and mortality trends, predict a further decline in the working age population of North East Scotland between 2022 and 2047.

The level and timing of new investments will be key to a successful transition for North East Scotland. Getting these wrong will have consequences for the region both economically and demographically. This is of course true for other areas also and balancing regional, economic and demographic needs is one of the many challenges facing Scottish Government plans for a Just Transition to a Net Zero economy. Careful planning and clear communication of the scale, timing and geography of investment in the green transition are urgently required in order to maximise the chances of there being a sufficiently large and skilled workforce available to deliver it.

Workforce planning must also take careful consideration of the pressures and competition for skills outlined earlier in this chapter. Training opportunities (for education leavers and those in brown jobs) as well as talent attraction mobility measures will require careful targeting to address those needs where either demand or challenges of recruitment, or both, are particularly high.