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

6. Conclusions – key considerations for policy

The transition to Net Zero is an urgent and complex priority for Scotland. It presents a considerable workforce challenge that is further complicated by connections between environmental, social, economic and demographic factors. In what follows we present key considerations and options for government at multiple levels as well as other stakeholders. This is neither exhaustive nor at a level of detailed policy choices. Rather it sets out some parameters and principles to guide those choices in future.

1. Policies and interventions should aim to build a more inclusive, sustainable and diverse workforce. This means that labour migration should sit alongside sustained investments in upskilling and reskilling local workforces. While immigration and related skills interventions can play important roles in the energy transition, investments in upskilling and reskilling local workforces, including people displaced from obsolete roles, will be critical, as will efforts to promote decent pay and working conditions to better attract and retain local workers. The UK Government has taken a number of steps already to demonstrate their commitment to supporting the energy transition in Scotland,^[30] and in October 2025, the announcement to create 400,000 jobs through a UK green energy plan was particularly welcome in its focus on training those coming from fossil fuel jobs, school leavers, the unemployed, veterans and ex-offenders.^[31]

Within such an inclusive approach international labour migration should be treated not as a knee-jerk response to shortages, as it often has been in other sectors, but instead part of a considered and evidence-based assessment of sectoral needs, skills gaps, and of the capacity to meet those through sustainable workforce development. Intergovernmental consultation should remain an important part of this process.

Arguably, the Scottish Government may wish to focus efforts and resource on how to upskill, reskill, or ‘activate’ local workforces given that immigration remains a reserved power of the UK Parliament, and thus a limited policy lever for devolved nations.

2. Bilateral partnerships with other countries offer important potential to increase the international skills base and fill the domestic shortfall in labour. Power to establish such partnerships also lies with the UK government, however Scottish government may wish to make proposals and use existing relationships to encourage further exploration of such possibilities. The UK Industrial Strategy recognises that “changes to the skills system will take time to come to fruition,” and that in the meantime there will be a domestic shortfall.^[32] Investments in training, and retraining even where sufficient, will take time to pay off and sourcing domestic workers could be challenging. Given this, the UK Government should consider bilateral partnerships in line with other countries that are already doing so or seeking to do so. Global competition for skilled workers is rising. Historically, the UK has recruited from countries like India, Pakistan and Philippines for roles relevant to the green transition (engineers, roofers, electricians etc), so the foundations of potential partnerships are there.

3. Greater coherence across policy areas including immigration policy, climate and energy policy, workforce development, and skills investment is urgently required. The clean energy industries are identified by the government as being one of the eight growth-driving sectors of the industrial strategy,^[33] and yet the 2025 Immigration White paper proposed a number of measures (including an increase in the salary threshold) which would make it harder to recruit migrant labour into occupations relevant to the green transition, such as roofers and welders. Shortly after the publication of the White paper, the Industrial Strategy acknowledged that changes to the skills system are likely to take time and so shortage occupations key to the ‘IS-8’ set of sectors, prioritised by the strategy (such as welders), are to be temporarily exempted from the planned increase to the pay threshold of the Skilled Worker visa. The Government then rowed back on aspects of the White Paper and, in July, announced a new temporary shortage list that included many roles relevant to green skills (which the MAC are to review in Spring 2026). They have also announced the Clean Energy Jobs Plan.^[34] This kind of incoherence and instability does not bode well for workforce planning or future investments in this area by training organisations and employers. Uncertainty around energy policy and in the skills system exacerbates workforce planning issues because developers and their supply chains need certainty around project pipelines in order to facilitate investment in workforce planning, development and training.

4. There is also a need to strengthen intergovernmental co-ordination and joint working at all levels to support effective and strategic regional planning.

A long-term, strategic approach should include climate and energy policymakers, devolved nations, national and regional training providers and agencies, trade unions, industry and community representatives. It is at the level of regions and local authorities that skills, labour, and sectoral needs will vary, and where skills and workforce interventions will have most impact. Hence, it makes sense to move away from a centralised and often disjointed approach (energy governance and immigration remains at the national level, while impacts are felt more locally), to cooperating more on joint initiatives with regions and devolved nations. This will ensure that labour and skills interventions are targeted and beneficial to the local communities in which they are situated, potentially levelling up parts of the country that have historically seen low levels of investment in skills and training.

For Scotland, work is already underway in the form of regional transition plans and the expansion of shared ownership of renewable energy developments. The recent announcement from both the Scottish and UK Governments to contribute up to £18 million (up to £9 million each) to the expansion and extension of the Oil and Gas Transition Training Fund is an example of how national policy can support such developments.^[35] The collaboration between the two governments on Skills Passports is another.

5. There is a need for longer term, coherent strategies for linking renewable energy and rural development.

Although rural areas in Scotland are rich in natural assets, they continue to face persistent challenges such as depopulation, the outmigration of young people, limited housing, and declining service provision. These pressures undermine opportunities for inclusive and sustainable growth. Addressing them requires an integrated, holistic, and place-based approach that recognises local natural assets, identifies skills and infrastructure gaps, and prioritises partnership working to tackle the demographic and economic issues facing rural regions. This can be achieved through formal place-based partnerships between communities, local authorities, and renewable energy developers, supported by policies that channel renewable energy revenues into long-term local development. Such an approach can provide stable funding for rural regeneration, supporting training, employment, housing, and transport needs, while strengthening local support and overall project coherence.

In areas which have also seen a historic lack of investment in skills training, cooperation from across different regions may help to access the necessary technical skills and the numbers of people required for the development of green jobs in that area. This may, in turn, necessitate a degree of internal labour mobility within or between regions, which in itself is not unproblematic given that not all green jobs, and the areas in which they are situated, will be attractive enough to warrant such mobility. The infrastructure of these areas, such as transport, housing, and public services, may also not have the capacity to cope with in-migration. To help alleviate regional disparities, governments could direct investment to those geographical areas which are most adversely affected by skills gaps; whilst also providing subsidies to support the migration of jobs into those areas. This would create opportunities for all regions to participate in the energy transition, and some of this work is already being addressed through the Regional Transition Plans. However, there remain questions around how to best support rural economic development in this regard, and how to embed renewable energy projects within these contexts. As the Just Transition Commission has pointed out, what counts as ‘success’ in this regard will vary between different areas, depending on needs, demography, industry and local labour markets.^[36]

6. While Scotland has limited scope on immigration, its position as an international leader of the Just Transition Movement puts it in a strong position to proactively tackle labour market exclusion and build a diverse workforce. The transition to cleaner energy across EU countries has been largely characterised by ad hoc plans and strategies, mostly by organisations in sectors strongly affected by the transition to cleaner energy.^[37] These have mostly happened organically and in response to regional or sectoral skills needs, mostly because of weak connections between policy areas such as energy, environment, skills and immigration – a problem which is not unique to the UK. While Scotland has not been immune to the effects of this, its commitment and approach to a Just Transition has been far more intentional in many respects. As well as the £500 million Just Transition Fund, the Just Transition Commission has gone beyond academic research and principles to develop a practical, people-and-placed-based approach to a Just Transition, including evaluation and monitoring.^[38] Very little of this concrete work has been carried out anywhere else in the world with regard to Just Transition, and so it presents an opportunity for Scotland to test, innovate, and build on promising practise where it can.^[39] The Just Transition Commission has already started to publish case studies of projects and initiatives across Scotland which are making a positive contribution across a range of transition challenges, including to what community benefit looks like in different areas of Scotland.^[40] This work will be important in providing a fine-grain, localised picture of what labour market exclusion looks like from area to area, and flowing from that, what tailored responses can be implemented to build more inclusive, diverse, and sustainable workforces.