U.S. Wind Industry Needs 77,000 More Trained Workers by 2025

The Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC), an international trade organization for the wind industry, published its Global Wind Workforce Outlook 2021-2025 today, which identifies 480,000 workers needed globally to be trained for the onshore and offshore wind energy market in the next five years to meet the 2050 climate goals.

The council estimates the need for more than 77,000 workers in the U.S. to receive specialized training “to construct, install, operate and maintain the growing onshore and offshore wind fleet”, not including jobs that will be create in the supply chain, manufacturing and secondary markets.

Global need by country for GOW certified wind workers.

Source: GWEC

The U.S. has a strong existing workforce for onshore wind with 122,000 GW of installed projects making it the second in the world behind China. With another 46 GW of new onshore installations in the pipeline, the demand even for onshore workforce is growing, according to the report.

In the offshore wind sector, which is finally taking off this year with Vineyard Wind, the first utility scale offshore wind farm approved in the U.S. this May, the call for offshore installers becoming imminent. By 2024 the U.S. needs to add at least 10,000 qualified workers to answer the demand when more large scale installations will begin construction and operation, followed by another 20,000 workers in the 2025.

Source: GWEC - https://gwec.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Global-Wind-Workforce-Outlook-2021-2025.pdf

GWEC promotes the training certification by the Global Wind Organisation (GWO), a certificate handed out since 2016 in Training Centers world wide. The U.S. currently has 18 training centers that offer GWO certificates in various categories, after the number of centers had doubled in 2020. GWO Basic Safety Training consists of “five training modules […] as the minimum necessary to enter or work on- and offshore wind project”.

Counting currently 5,425 GWO trained workers in the U.S. and Canada, the set target is to reach 20,000 certifications by 2022. That stands in contrast to an estimated need of 38,000 workers according to calculation model by 2021. The time to enter the offshore job market is now.

Source: GWEC - https://gwec.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Global-Wind-Workforce-Outlook-2021-2025.pdf

GWEC Report Summary (video) and download link:

https://gwec.net/global-wind-workforce-outlook-2021-2025/?mc_cid=28115d3c2d&mc_eid=a4e6a1a2eb