Too few workers threatens to short-circuit green transition

A shortage of qualified electricians has emerged as another significant obstacle to the Albanese government’s plans to quickly remake the nation’s energy system to combat climate change. Electrification of everything is touted as an essential part of the drive to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It is why households are being told they must forgo gas cooktops and heating, and why drivers are being encouraged to buy expensive battery-powered electric vehicles.

Heavy industry is looking for ways to switch energy-hungry processes from gas to electricity where possible as well. But, like other areas of the energy transition, where infrastructure projects are taking longer and costing more than envisaged, the reality is proving to be somewhat different to the ambition. Highly skilled new workers are an essential part of the equation. But, as we report on Friday, a key Labor initiative to train the next generation of clean-energy technicians has filled fewer than 18 per cent the of available spaces.

The shortfall exacerbates a crippling workforce shortage that threatens to derail the nation’s transition to renewables. The Electrical Trades Union has warned that the sector needs an additional 32,000 electricians to help rewire the nation by 2030, or an extra 20,000 apprentices a year for the next three years based on current completion rates, representing a 240 per cent increase.

The reality is that the shortage of qualified electricians will take a long time to fix. The trade is one of the top three for shortages now, and just 1900 completed training in the June quarter, a couple of hundred up on the last corresponding figure pre-pandemic.

Skills Minister Brendan O’Connor is echoing the commonwealth workforce planning agency, Jobs and Skills Australia, in calling for more women to be employed as electricians. Just 2 per cent of electricians are women. But this assumes the reasons young men find electrical apprenticeships unattractive do not apply to women. They do – low wages, the quality of courses and the time it takes to qualify are gender-neutral. Addressing them will take time; electrician qualifications are part of a complete redesign of how trades are taught, commissioned by the commonwealth and states. Problems cited are courses that “stifle innovation and flexibility” in teaching and learning, and that make upskilling and reskilling slow.

For now, and years to come, we will face shortages of qualified electricians – which will slow projects down and create risks. Importing more skilled workers from overseas may be part of the solution. Mr O’Connor said he would resort to importing workers with the necessary skills – if they were not being trained domestically – through targeted skilled migration. But this can also have its problems, aside from the growing community resistance to higher levels of immigration. In NSW last year there was industry uproar over training providers accrediting migrants as electricians on the basis of recognised prior learning, demonstrated by people supplying videos of their doing basic work.

But the shortage of suitably qualified electricians is a significant national problem. It will certainly make the hoped-for renewable energy transition more difficult and more expensive. But it will also add to inflationary pressures throughout the economy and make the federal government’s other key policy priority areas, including building more affordable housing, more difficult and more expensive as well. It is further evidence of the unintended consequences of a command system where setting a bureaucratic target is too far divorced from having a proper plan of how to get there.