Clean Energy Jobs Plan

Chris McDonald Excerpts

Monday 20th October 2025 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Chris McDonald)]

Britain’s drive to home-grown clean energy is creating a new generation of good jobs around the country, and clean energy industries are booming. The action we have taken has already delivered more than £50 billion of clean energy investment announcements since July 2024. This represents the biggest investment in home-grown clean energy in the UK’s history, and is allowing us to take back control from petrostates and dictators and to bring down bills for good.

Our mission to make Britain a clean energy superpower is not just about energy security; it is the best opportunity we have had in a generation to deliver economic security for workers and their communities—creating hundreds of thousands of secure, well-paid jobs with strong trade unions, as we roll out clean energy infrastructure, upgrade millions of homes and build our domestic supply chains.

That is why on 19 October, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero published the clean energy jobs plan. It sets out how the Government will work in partnership with industry and trade unions to help workers in all parts of the country to benefit from these opportunities—supporting our existing workforce to find new opportunities, training up the next generation, and helping our young people to get good, unionised jobs.

Our analysis for the jobs plan estimates that we will need to see the clean energy workforce double from around 440,000 in 2023 to over 860,000 jobs supported across clean energy sectors and their supply chains by 2030. These opportunities will be distributed nationwide, encompassing all nations and regions, while some regions have high concentrations of particular clean energy sectors.

The jobs plan

The jobs plan sets out how we are taking action to address key challenges in delivering the skilled workforce our clean energy sector will need.

To deliver the pipeline of skilled workers, we will align the skills system and employment support to our industrial strategy sectors, including clean energy industries. The Government are providing an additional £1.2 billion per year to support skills development over the course of the Parliament, including funding for 1.3 million 16 to 19-year-olds to access training, supporting an additional 65,000 learners per year. We will also establish five clean energy technical excellence colleges to specialise in training skilled clean energy workforces for local and national businesses, in addition to the 10 construction TECs already confirmed.

To harness the potential of the UK workforce, we will: provide up to £20 million of funding from UK and Scottish Government to aid the transition of North sea workers into clean energy sectors; deliver £3.6 million of funding across 2025-26 to support innovative regional skills interventions in Aberdeenshire, Cheshire, Lincolnshire and Pembrokeshire to pilot support for up to 2,000 workers; support RenewableUK and Offshore Energies UK, in collaboration with the Scottish Government, to expand the energy skills passport; and develop and promote new employment pathways and career opportunities for veterans into the clean energy sector.

To deliver not just jobs, but good jobs, we will support greater trade union recognition and promote collective bargaining across the clean energy sector as a mechanism to facilitate engagement with industry, improve job quality, secure fair work and build a resilient workforce. We will also embed trade union representation across DESNZ governance, and close loopholes in legislation to extend to the clean energy sector employment protections, including the national minimum wage, enjoyed by offshore oil and gas workers working beyond UK territorial seas. We will leverage additional private investment into skills and strengthen workforce protections, through introducing workforce criteria across relevant Department for Energy Security and Net Zero grants and procurements, including in the clean industry bonus. We will develop a fair work charter with the wind sector and trade unions, which outlines a sector-wide commitment to provide high-quality employment through the CIB, and we will improve the inclusivity and visibility of clean energy job opportunities through a new social inclusion forum and an industry-led public awareness campaign.

To ensure benefits for every nation and region, we will: work with local areas to develop our regional mapping of clean energy jobs; establish a skills forum and a net zero network to bring together representatives of industrial strategy zones across the UK; work closely with local growth plans; and utilise the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero’s local net zero delivery group and ministerial-led mayoral roundtables to identify opportunities for collaboration and alignment between central and regional Government.

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