Annual Report 2025
Global Solar Training Standards Pilots, April 2025, Pearce Renewables Training Facility, Dallas, Texas, USA
The Energy Workforce Challenge
As the GWO Forum ‘25 opened its doors and participants gathered in Madrid to learn about the role of workforce develop- ment in meeting 2030 targets, a historical precedent was announced as both BBC and Reuters shared that renewables had overtaken coal as the world’s largest source of electricity. Taken from a report by the energy think tank, Ember, this statis- tic showed that renewables electricity gen- eration rose to 5,072 TWh in the first half of 2025, while coal generation fell to 4,896 TWh. With the announcement of this global re- cord, and as wind and solar alone overtook fossil fuels in the share of EU electricity generation in 2025, panellists at the Fo- rum’s “Workforce Development: Mac- rolevel Solutions and Educational Perspec- tives” session explored how our community is addressing the growing appetite for wind and solar. And for our audience, the implications rang loud and clear: with a greater interest in renewables, and as many governments set ambitious targets for meeting the demand for energy gener- ation, there will be downstream conse- quences for the Training Providers, em-
ployers and technicians who are building the energy infrastructure of tomorrow.
A central consequence of this demand is the pressure it puts on the entire value chain. And the impact of this demand is felt to differing degrees for the wind and solar industries. Given the recency of our entry into the solar sector, the following com- mentary focuses primarily on the challeng- es faced by the wind workforce, while our new solar initiative is addressed later in this publication. Workforce Development on the Global Agenda Since the Global Renewables Alliance (GRA) launched the 3xRenewables by 2030 campaign in 2023, the need to deliv- er on global energy targets as part of a just transition has become increasingly ur- gent. With global wind energy capacity projected to increase by 87% between 2025 and 2030, and as turbine fleets age, a critical question remains: how can the industry grow the workforce and strength- en skills to meet this rising need?
8
Made with FlippingBook Ebook Creator