The scale-up of offshore renewable energy in the UK will be critical to offset job losses in oil and gas, Robert Gordon University (RGU) has warned.
In a report, entitled “Striking the Balance – Building a sustainable UK offshore energy workforce”, RGU said the UK risks losing tens of thousands of offshore energy jobs by 2030 unless urgent and co-ordinated action is taken immediately.
It provides critical insights into the future of the UK’s offshore energy sector and considers the evolving strategies of European nations such as Norway, Denmark, and the Netherlands, which continue to invest in domestic fossil fuel production, while accelerating low-carbon growth.
While the scale-up of offshore wind energy in the UK can offset losses in oil and gas, RGU said governments need to take action now.
The UK offshore renewables workforce is forecast to increase from approximately 39,000 in 2024 to between 84,000 and 153,000 by 2035.
To maintain the UK offshore energy workforce at the 2024 level, the UK has to deliver close to 40GW of installed offshore wind, up to 40% UK content in capital expenditure work, as well as around 0.6 million barrels of oil equivalent per day by 2030.
RGU warned that, before 2027, there is likely to be limited capacity for the UK offshore renewables sector to accommodate the quantity of oil and gas workers becoming available on the jobs market due to the decline in the oil and gas industry.
The report outlines three offshore energy workforce scenarios (the low, mid, and high cases) and up to £350bn of future investment in the UK’s offshore energy sector between 2025 and 2035.
In the lower case, the North Sea oil and gas workforce could shrink by approximately 400 jobs – the same number lost as a result of the closure of the Grangemouth refinery – every two weeks for the next five years.
Under a high-case scenario, workforce demand levels across the UK could hit over 210,000, but this will require the delivery of an additional 35GW (or close to 6GW per year) of offshore wind and sustaining UK oil and gas activities for an extended period, similar to policies applied in Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands.
Significant levels of new operational capacity and capability will be required to deliver on the ambition of up to 40% UK capex content for new offshore wind projects and up to 50% for oil and gas decommissioning activities by 2030.
“The UK’s lack of joined-up action means that the window of opportunity for delivering a just transition is closing,” said Professor Paul de Leeuw (pictured), director of the Energy Transition Institute at Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen.
“With investment at risk and renewables projects facing delays, the findings underline the present-day situation for the UK offshore energy industry and its stakeholders.
“The big prize of a significant jobs gain is still within our collective reach. Inaction or simply slow progress will mean that UK offshore energy job numbers overall could drop by almost 20% to 125,000 by 2030, making the path towards net zero even harder to negotiate.
“The analysis shows that there is a workforce ‘Goldilocks zone’ between 2025 and 2030 during which the UK supply chain capacity and capability can be sustained, developed and invested in, so that the transferability of the offshore energy workforce is optimised.
“However, key to the effective delivery of the Goldilocks zone is rapid investment in UK capabilities to deliver a fast-growing programme of green capital projects, which in turn will help to realise ambitious goals for domestic execution of these projects.”