Annual Report 2025
CEO’s Statement
plicit targets that they have committed to achieving. This discrepancy highlights the need for employers and national bodies to come together to mobilise the workforce needed, especially while they are still not being fully integrated into national energy transition strategies. This disparity in how skills initiatives are de- livered is also why our current strategy chal- lenges our organisation to enable a safer energy transition as the globally leading body for standardised training and work- force development . It is a strategy which encourages every industry player, from pol- icymaker to employer, to make explicit the energy initiatives they are engaged in so that we can all do our part in making skills and workforce planning a core part of the energy transition. As we look back at our own four key initia- tives: Driving Excellence in Quality; Leading the Industry in Workforce Development; Building a Leading Position in the Top 20 Markets and Pursuing a Role in Solar PV, I am proud to report on the progress made possible by active contributions from mem- bers, partners and our wider community. Deserving a celebration of its own is our partnership with Global Solar Council (GSC) aimed at developing Global Solar Training
Standards. Through this joint initiative, we’ve leveraged our governance and Training Pro- vider community to serve the utility and in- dustrial-scale solar PV industry. I strongly en- courage our readers to dive into the “Pursuing a Role in Solar PV” chapter in this publication, and to get involved. But first, let’s go back to that opening figure because 2,018,000 people is no small amount for industries traditionally charac- terised by a lack of clear job roles and ca- reer pathways. In 2025, we released our Job Roles white- paper, which supports a range of stakehold- ers, from educators and training providers to employers and students, all with a shared aim of accelerating entry into the industry. Building on that, we shared Jobs4RE, our first working document targeting govern- ments and policymakers to systematically and proactively plan for a skilled workforce to support their own targets for the energy transition. We were also moved to increase the availa- ble technician workforce by recognising ex- perienced technicians with pre-existing skills. The REcognition programme is de- signed to improve access to the wind indus- try’s global opportunities, just as the ABEEólica Guideline, the third of its kind, is
another example of how alignment between global standards and national requirements can lead to a significant reduction in repeat training, while empowering an entire indus- try and economic development. And with clear job roles and career path- ways in place, strengthening the standard- ised route to upskilling is the next step. In the past year, we extended our portfolio to include a new High Voltage Training Standard, while making significant improve- ments to existing Requirements and Stand- ards, and the numbers tell a clear story of successful adoption. With 603,575 courses completed by 140,544 technicians across 636 global Training Providers, the average number of Training Records per technician has reached 6.16, confirming a trend to- wards a more highly trained workforce. Our strategic goal to enable the energy transition as the leading body for workforce development is ambitious, but it is a crucial one. And with our collective achievements in 2025, I am confident we are on the right track.
Jakob Lau Holst CEO Global Wind Organisation
2,018,000. That’s how many skilled wind and solar technicians our forecasts show are needed by 2030 to construct, install, operate and maintain the energy transition. It’s also the number of human beings whose safe return home each day depends on us. The scale of this workforce challenge - to secure a pipe- line of people with recognisable skills to work safely and competently - requires a greater degree of coordination along the value chain. And to secure this pipeline of qualified technicians, we need to leverage standardised workforce training. Yet in their report released in 2024, Deliver- ing on the UAE Consensus, the Internation- al Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) an- nounced that fewer than 12% of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) explicitly mention education and skills related to en- ergy or low-carbon development. While a significant number of countries may be pur- suing skills initiatives outside their NDC frameworks, only a small proportion set ex-
Copenhagen, 25 March 2026
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