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

3. Growing a domestic workforce – attraction, retention and training.

Of the three main routes to meeting workforce needs, the first two focus on growing a domestic workforce either by upskilling and transferring workers from existing ‘brown’ energy jobs or by developing an attractive offer for new entrants with appropriate entry routes through education and training pathways and apprenticeships.

3.1. Upskilling and transfer of existing workforce

As noted at the start of this report, the UK’s oil and gas sector, which is in relative decline has been identified as a key potential source of skilled labour for the green energy transition (Offshore Energies UK 2023; UK Government 2025). The Energy Transition Institute at Robert Gordon University projects that, under a successful transition, 62 per cent of the offshore energy workforce could be supporting the renewables industry by 2030, compared with 22 per cent in 2023. With a slower transition only just over half of energy jobs will be in renewables with the rest in traditional oil and gas (Robert Gordon University, 2023).

Similarly, a PwC (2022) report suggests that approximately 270,000 existing oil and gas workers across the UK could potentially transition into green energy roles. However, the sector’s age profile, around 20 per cent of this workforce is expected to retire by 2030, reduces the pool of transferable workers to approximately 216,000. This falls well short of the estimated 400,000 workers required to build the UK’s net zero energy workforce across sectors such as nuclear, hydrogen, and renewables by 2050, including around 48,000 roles in Scotland alone.^[12] The PwC report concludes that the growth of renewable energy generation will be constrained by this substantial shortage of skilled labour and that considerable attention needs to be paid to making green roles more attractive to students as well as boosting the provision of entry level apprenticeships.

Both sets of claims broadly align in emphasising the high degree of transferability of skills, reflecting significant overlap, particularly with respect to foundational competencies within the existing energy workforce. Many roles in the oil and gas sector (such as mechanical, electrical, piping, instrumentation, project engineering, subsea, offshore operations, health and safety, welding, and inspection) share core engineering, safety, systems, and project management skills that are also highly relevant to low-carbon and clean energy industries.

However, not all the necessary skills are currently available, indicating that additional training will be required. Greenspon and Raimi (2024) examine how well the skills of existing fossil fuel workers in the United States align with those demanded by growing or emerging energy sectors, particularly within the same local labour markets. They find notable skills gaps: fossil fuel workers tend to possess strong technical and mechanical abilities, while many green jobs require more interpersonal, managerial, and analytical skills and these gaps limit direct transferability.

Similarly, in the UK, Valero (2024) employs panel data from the ONS five-quarter longitudinal Labour Force Survey to differentiate between “green jobs” (those involving core green tasks) and “brown jobs,” which are concentrated in emissions-intensive sectors. Their definition is in line with the approach outlined in Chapter 2 where a job is classified as green if it exhibits one of three characteristics (Rubio et al. 2022). The study finds that green jobs are more likely to involve non-routine, analytical, or interpersonal tasks, whereas brown jobs tend to be more routine, manual, and physically oriented. Green jobs are also more prevalent among workers aged 35 to 54 and those with higher education, particularly university graduates, while brown jobs are more common among individuals with lower or vocational qualifications. Transitions into green jobs typically occur among graduates of prime working age who move between roles with similar task profiles rather than across major skill divides, reflecting the more analytical and non-routine nature of green work. Sato et al. (2023) reach similar conclusions across both the US and the UK, finding that low-carbon jobs generally demand higher levels of technical, managerial, social, IT and cognitive skills compared with other comparable generic occupations.

Greenspon and Raimi (2024) argue that in the U.S., even when fossil fuel skills overlap with those required for green jobs, these opportunities are often located in different regions. Workers in oil-producing areas may not live near expanding renewable energy hubs, making relocation a significant barrier. Hanson (2023) explores how the energy transition could disrupt local labour markets, particularly in regions heavily dependent on carbon-intensive industries. Hanson maps the spatial distribution of fossil-fuel–intensive employment across U.S. commuting zones to identify areas most at risk. The study is motivated by concerns that the transition may lead to localised job losses and deepen regional inequality, echoing the persistent effects of past structural shocks such as the decline of manufacturing. Hanson estimates that around 1.7 million U.S. workers are employed in fossil-fuel–intensive industries most likely to be affected. These jobs tend to offer relatively high wages for non–college educated workers, meaning their loss could have a substantial negative impact on earnings. Moreover, Hanson highlights that such workers often have limited mobility, constrained by financial, personal, and social factors that make it difficult to relocate to areas with growing green job opportunities. Hanson’s core messages about concentrated exposure, weak worker mobility, and the need for place-sensitive policies map well to the UK, Scotland and North East Scotland. That said, there are notable differences also. General worker mobility in the US has historically been higher than in the UK albeit with recent declines in the US (Azzopardi et al. 2020). Meanwhile, the smaller spatial distances in the UK may mean that mobility takes the form of longer commutes rather than more general mobility.

Transitions can also be constrained by differences in certification, regulatory standards, work practices, and technical specialisation, for example, between oil and gas drilling, wind turbine maintenance, and electrolysis plant operations. Strict licensing and training requirements further slow the expansion of labour supply. Offshore Energies UK (2023) reports that more than 170 organisations are involved in administering skills recognition and training. Creating more flexible systems, such as “skills passports” and bespoke training programmes, could help accelerate workforce transitions.

Recently launched schemes in Scotland and the UK include the new energy skills passport, launched in January 2025, and the Aberdeen Oil and Gas Transition Training Fund announced in July 2025 and administered by Skills Development Scotland (UK Government 2025: 37). Both initiatives are too new to have been evaluated and neither has so far reached more than relatively modest numbers of workers. Nonetheless both have potential to encourage a transition of fossil fuel workers into green energy jobs. Further afield, across Europe, several regional energy strategies already highlight initiatives of this kind, aiming to map and align existing workers’ competencies with emerging green job pathways on the assumption of significant overlap in foundational skills.

RES-SKILL project

The ERASMUS+ funded RES-SKILL project (2020-23) sought to help coal workers transition into high-demand jobs in the renewable energy sector.

The project was a collaborative effort involving VET providers, industry representatives, social partners, and regional development agencies from Germany, Greece, Austria, Romania, Bulgaria, and Poland. Together, these countries employ 81 per cent of the EU’s coal workforce.

The project identified complementarities and mismatches between coal workers and renewable energy sector occupations; developed transition profiles, self-assessment tools, and skills portfolios; created resources for the establishment of Joint Competence Centres; and disseminated outputs through awareness raising activities.

One of the primary outcomes of RES-SKILL was the development of learning materials tailored to coal workers' career reorientation. RES-SKILL also formulated strategic and operational plans for the establishment of Joint Competence Centres, laying the groundwork for these hubs to become operational. These centres are expected to play a crucial role in the transition, offering a structured environment for career reorientation and practical training, as well as fostering collaboration between vocational education providers, industry stakeholders, and other partners, such as sector skills bodies and associations, trade unions, and NGOs.

Demographic factors such as age, willingness to move spatially and availability of housing, workers health and physical condition, are all additional hurdles that need to be carefully considered before assuming a straightforward transfer of workers from brown to green jobs. It is possible for example that older workers may leave the labour market even if they possess relevant skills, others may choose to move abroad as part of a brown-to-brown job transition rather than retraining into green jobs.^[13] This points again to the need to co-ordinate and combine a number of strategies to meet labour needs complementing re-training for existing energy workers with initiatives to attract younger entrants from outside the traditional energy sector.

3.2. Training new entrants

While UK regions may be constrained on immigration policy, there is much more potential flexibility on green skills investment, coordination and provision. Experience to date suggests that the region is the most ‘local’ scale at which activity targeting green skills can be strategically coordinated to both reduce the risk of skills and labour gaps and maximise the benefits to host communities. Across EU countries to date, most initiatives targeting green skills have taken place at the regional and local level.

Examples of local and regional responses to green skills provision

Denmark’s local Vocational Education Centre South (EUC Syd) provides green skills provision at a regional level across all its 75 study programmes and a specialist centre for construction workers that focuses on new energy-saving techniques. The centre combines traditional classroom training with learning in its test facility where participants can use real energy-saving tools and materials.

In the UK, Liverpool City Region Local Enterprise Partnership developed a strategy focused on skills for the low-carbon economy. As part of this, the partnership coordinated skills training in higher education colleges with the demands of local companies manufacturing products used by offshore wind. It has also played a central role in filling a skill gap reported by Scottish Power, which faced an imminent shortage of labour, caused by an ageing workforce and lack of new apprentices. To tackle this, the partnership created a strategy to help upskill the existing workforce and train new engineers.

The Liverpool City Region is actively pursuing a zero-carbon future by 2040. It has a strong low-carbon economy focused on offshore wind and holds a leading position as a Centre for Offshore Renewable Engineering (CORE), being the location of one of the world's largest concentrations of offshore wind farms in Liverpool Bay. COREs are partnerships between Central and Local Government and Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) that ensure businesses looking to invest in manufacturing for the renewables industry receive the most comprehensive support possible.

(Cedefop, 2018. Skills for green jobs in Denmark: an update and Skills for green jobs in the UK: an update).

Green apprenticeships may be one pathway to increasing interest and skills for green jobs amongst younger people and one which is being considered at various levels. In Scotland, there are currently three main types of apprenticeships:

• Foundation Apprenticeships, which provide school pupils with early workplace experience;
• Modern Apprenticeships, which offer paid, practical training to help young people begin or progress in their careers;
• Graduate Apprenticeships, which enable participants to gain degree-level qualifications while working.

These apprenticeship pathways are tailored to different stages of education and career development and thus can play an important role in equipping the workforce with the skills needed for emerging green jobs. Skills Development Scotland (SDS) administers a number of modern and graduate apprenticeship opportunities in the green and clean energy sector and reported in 2023 that 30% of Modern Apprenticeship starts and 38% of Graduate Apprenticeship starts were in sectors “of importance to the transition to net zero” (Skills Development Scotland 2023). While the current SDS (Rubio et. al., 2022) analysis focuses on defining what constitutes a green job and assessing present and future green job and skills needs (see Chapter 2), further review is required to understand the role of modern and graduate apprenticeships in meeting these needs. Nevertheless, the Energy Transition Skills Hub in Aberdeenshire - which opened in summer 2025 and aims to support 1,000 students and mid-career professionals into energy-transition-focused jobs within its first five years - could be viewed as a strong example of emerging ‘green apprenticeship’ pathways in Scotland.

3.3. Pay and working conditions – how attractive are green jobs?

Both transferability across sectors and recruitment of new entrants to training programmes, apprenticeships or directly into green jobs will also be dependent upon labour market conditions including relative pay and working conditions. Arguments for why there may be a green wage premium include the need for more advanced or specialised skills or education, greater complexity or specialised tasks, a scarcity of qualified workers in emerging green industries sectors pushing up wages and employers boosting wages to attract skilled talent. The evidence on the size and direction of green wage gaps however is more mixed.

A small literature indicates a wage premium or higher wages for green jobs. Kuai et al. (2025) look at Japan using a worker level survey from 2021 and find that green workers receive a wage premium of about 7.3 per cent compared to non-green workers. They also find that a 10 per cent increase in a job’s green intensity is associated with around a 0.8 per cent increase in wages. The premium is heterogeneous with more highly skilled and younger workers benefiting the most. Valero et al. (2021) use microdata (labour force surveys in the UK and EU) mapped to O*NET task classifications of “green jobs” to classify jobs as directly green, new and emerging green, enhanced skills green, or green increased demand. Green jobs (around 17 per cent of jobs) are generally associated with a wage premium, especially for lower and middle skilled occupational roles. With the addition of controls for occupation, which account for wage differentials between jobs regardless of how ‘green’ or not they are, the premium falls to about 7 per cent (from 24 per cent without occupational controls).^[14] A broader review by Cerimelo et al. (2024) estimates wage differentials between green and non-green jobs in nine major Latin American countries and finds a wage premium of around 18 to 22 per cent for the period 2012-2019 where this gap has remained relatively stable over time.

Other evidence suggests that any green wage premium is unevenly distributed across green jobs, and that some may in fact incur a wage penalty or lower wages when compared to non-green jobs. A recent report by the Adecco Group indicates a small overall wage penalty with more complex green roles offering a wage premium of up to 22 per cent (e.g. sustainability consultants) whilst green jobs with less complexity pay less than comparable non-green roles. In other words, there is no universal guarantee of a green wage premium; in routine, lower-skilled roles, green jobs may pay less.

Sato et al. (2023), adopting an occupational approach, also document substantial variation in the size of the green wage premium. Using UK job posting data, they find that during the early 2010s, green (or low-carbon) jobs in engineering, skilled trades, and machine operative roles commanded positive wage premiums ranging from 6 to 20 per cent. Wage premiums are also found to persist in some middle- and low-skilled occupations, such as construction, building, and process, plant, and machine operative roles. However, within more narrowly defined occupational categories, premiums have either declined or largely disappeared in recent years, likely reflecting an increased supply of green workers. This more recent absence of lasting positive wage premiums, even in occupations requiring higher skill levels, is likely to pose a challenge for attracting workers into certain low-carbon jobs.

Other potential barriers, particularly for recruitment of new, younger workers are a result of information asymmetries which limit awareness of opportunities or create perceptions of certain types of manual green jobs (e.g. insulation, roofing) as temporary and more generally unattractive. Crowhurst and Taylor (2023) report on a nationally representative poll and five focus groups involving 16- to 25-year-olds across the UK. They find low awareness of what green jobs are as well as low appetite to take up a range of roles. Less than 25 per cent found specific roles attractive (especially manual jobs such as installers and roofers) and only 7 per cent expressed interest in being a “heat pump engineer.” In addition, there were concerns around job insecurity and low pay with a quarter of young respondents seeing low pay as a key disadvantage of many green jobs.

There is limited published analysis of pay differentials between brown and green energy sectors at the regional level, including in North East Scotland. The recent Workforce Insight 2025 report by Offshore Energies UK (OEUK) indicates that salaries in the UK oil and gas sector are, on average, 15–30 per cent higher than those for equivalent roles in offshore wind, nuclear, hydrogen, and carbon capture and storage. The report further finds that this pay premium is most pronounced in technical and craft occupations, although it is narrowing as renewable energy sectors mature. While the analysis is not disaggregated at the Scotland or Aberdeen level, it is reasonable to expect the oil and gas wage premium to be particularly significant in regions with economies strongly linked to offshore energy, such as Aberdeen and the wider North East.^[15] Oil and gas roles (especially technical, offshore, and higher-risk positions) have traditionally commanded relatively high wages, whereas many green energy roles do not share these characteristics and therefore tend to offer lower pay premiums. Complementary evidence is provided by Skills Development Scotland’s Regional Skills Assessments, which compare advertised salaries for green and non-green jobs across Scotland. This reveals that the median advertised salary for green jobs in Aberdeen City and Shire was £37,600 in the first six months of 2024 (see Table 1 below). This was higher than the median advertised salary for all jobs in the region which was £32,400 (a 16 per cent gap). expected, the gap is smaller than in other regions, reflecting Aberdeen’s strong dependence on the oil and gas sector, which elevates median earnings. However, this measure does not provide information on what workers are actually paid, nor is comparable data for jobs in the brown sector presented.

Source: Skills Development Scotland, Regional Skills Assessments, Oct 2024.

3.4. Location, location, location: where are the green jobs?

We have noted already the importance of considering potential spatial mismatches in the distribution of green jobs and available skills and labour. Sato et al. (2023) document the spatial pattern of green jobs across the UK (and the USA). They show that whereas high-carbon manual jobs tend to cluster tightly around fossil fuel extraction centres, low-carbon vacancies are more widely spread across regions. This applies to both high-skill (e.g., engineering) and low-skill (e.g., buildings and transportation) occupations. Sato et al. (2023) estimate a locational Gini coefficient of 0.46 for low-skilled high-carbon jobs, compared with 0.22 for their low-carbon counterparts indicating that the latter are more spread out.^[16] They further show that this spatial concentration also characterises high-skill high-carbon roles: around 20 per cent of all high-carbon job advertisements in the UK are in Aberdeen, and roughly half are concentrated in just three travel-to-work areas, namely Aberdeen, Glasgow, and London.

PwC’s 2024 Green Jobs Barometer also provides information on the distribution of green job vacancies in the UK in 2024. Scotland leads for the proportion of green adverts (5.6%) and has the highest share amongst regions. This compares to a UK average of 3.3% green adverts, whilst London has the largest in absolute number of green adverts (58, 585 adverts). The PwC report does not disaggregate to the sub regional level.

Skills Development Scotland does provide more spatially disaggregated vacancies data, using its published framework for classifying jobs as green/non-green (see Chapter 2). Online job postings are labelled green or non-green and then further broken down as Enhanced Skills and Knowledge, Increased Demand or New and Emerging. Table 2 below provides some information on the demand for green jobs comparing Aberdeen City and Shire with selected regions.

Source: Skills Development Scotland, Various Regional Skills Assessments, 2024

In general, the data indicates that green job vacancies are more geographically spread. This was a higher proportion of green job postings than the Scottish average (42.3%) and considerably higher than the Inverness and Highlands region (36.1%). The number of green job postings in the region accounted for 12.0% of all green job postings in Scotland.

The geographic mismatch between where workers are needed and where they are available may undermine progress toward carbon-reduction targets, weaken local and regional economic performance, and exacerbate existing demographic pressures. A recent UKERC study, Jobs, Skills and Regional Implications of the Low Carbon Residential Heat Transition in the UK(2025), which examines the rollout of heat pumps, highlights some of these challenges. It finds persistent worker and skills shortages, noting that in some regions, a lack of qualified labour may slow deployment, increase costs, or divert workers from other sectors of the economy. This is consistent with our previous discussion on green skills passports and transition training funds, which would need to be fully evaluated and then scaled up to enable more effective movement of workers into green roles.