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About half a million workers need to be trained to meet forecasted wind generation deployments between 2021 -2025.
- 308,000 will need to be trained to deploy onshore wind, while 172,000 will be needed for offshore wind.
The Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) has stated that about 480,000 workers will need to be trained to Global Wind Organisation (GWO) standards to ensure capacity to deliver the forecast 490 GW of new wind power capacity between 2021-2025. According to its report titled ‘Global wind workforce outlook 2021-25’, the GWEC has noted that workers will have to be trained to construct, install, operate and maintain new wind additions, of which 308,000 will be trained for onshore wind projects and 172,000 for offshore projects.
This report states only accounts for a fraction of the job opportunities available in the growing wind industry. The report analyses the workforce needs of Africa’s largest wind generation countries, South Africa and Morroco. South Africa would need to train 2,434 workers, while Morocco will need to train 1,223 workers to deploy the forecasted wind generation capacities of 5,648MW and 1,426MW respectively.
GWEC’s CEO, Ben Backwell, notes that the wind industry needs to scale up at an unprecedented rate over the next decade for the world to meet net-zero. “If ambition is scaled up to what it needs to be – three or four times the current market forecasts – the workforce training requirements will be far higher than what was found in this report,” he adds.