GUEST COLUMN:
James Green
Social Mapping & Monitoring Evaluation Learning Lead
Bute Energy
A green job is only a local opportunity if someone in that community can see it, reach it and believe it could be for them. That’s why the skills conversation around renewable energy has to begin with place.
Wales has a major opportunity to build a cleaner energy system, strengthen its supply chain and create routes into good employment. But if those opportunities are designed from a distance, without understanding the communities around new infrastructure, we risk building the future economy in a way that still leaves too many people outside it.
At Bute Energy, we are developing renewable energy parks across Wales, with a vision of a thriving nation powered by clean energy and of every turn of a turbine delivering benefit to nearby communities. Our projects represent £3 billion of investment, and our aim is to keep as much of that value in Wales as possible.
That ambition has to include skills. Wales will need 25,000 green jobs by 2050, across roles including planners, project managers and engineers. Up to 2,000 jobs will be supported by our wind energy projects alone. Those jobs will not appear in isolation; they will need a pipeline of talent, and that pipeline has to be built deliberately.
My role at Bute Energy is focused on social mapping, monitoring, evaluation and learning. In practice, that means using data to understand the specific needs of different communities, whether rural, urban or Valleys communities, and helping to target community investment in the right places. Across our portfolio, those communities are very diverse. A single, generic approach to apprenticeships, skills or employability will not work for all of them.
For the past three years we have been engaging with communities, holding focus groups and roundtable discussions, and asking people what challenges they face. When young people say they are struggling to find employment or access skills, the next step is to understand what sits behind that. It may be a lack of visible opportunities. It may be weak community cohesion. It may be that young people leave the area because they cannot see a future there.
Often, when you follow those issues back to their root causes, the barriers are very practical. Transport may be poor – bus routes may not connect people to the places where jobs and training exist. A young person may live at the top of a hill where winter weather makes travel difficult. Another person may have caring responsibilities that affect when they can work or attend training. These are not small details; they shape whether an opportunity can be taken up at all.
That is why a place-based approach is so important. Businesses can help create apprenticeships and employment routes, but we also need to understand the people and places around those opportunities. We work with local jobs coaches who can take a person-centred approach, supporting potential employees while also helping employers understand the real-life barriers that may affect them.
For renewable energy, apprenticeships have a particularly important role. They can act as the hook that helps develop transferable skills for a sector that is going to change quickly. Onshore wind is only part of the picture; battery storage, offshore wind and future technologies will all require skills that can move across projects, regions and sectors.
There is also an opportunity for Wales to build expertise that travels beyond Wales. If we develop a skilled workforce through onshore projects here, there is no reason those skills could not support projects elsewhere in the UK in five or 10 years’ time. That would mean Welsh workers and Welsh supply chains benefiting from a wider green economy, not only from projects within our own borders.
Our Future Skills Strategy is designed to help build that pipeline. We are working with schools, colleges and universities, supporting classroom education, encouraging more young women and girls to study STEM subjects, funding planning students on Cardiff University’s Spatial Planning and Development Masters, backing the Physics Mentoring Project, and taking part in careers events across Wales. We are also involved with college enrichment activity and work to support female STEM learners.
But skills development should not be measured only by whether an apprenticeship place was created or a course was completed. We need to understand the outcomes more deeply. Has someone gained confidence? Do they see a future in their community? Are there cultural amenities, green spaces and local assets that make them want to stay, work and build a life there?
This is where community benefit funds and social value commitments can support a wider system. Our Social Value Standard places collaboration at the heart of how we work with the renewable energy and sustainability industry. Contractors have commitments linked to apprenticeships and opportunities for people who are furthest from the workplace, but those commitments have to connect with the wider needs of the community.
Data can help us do that well. We use digital visualisation tools to map the systems we are intervening in, from local apprenticeship pathways to broader community challenges. Transport, confidence, childcare, culture, skills, employment and place attachment can all be linked.
For Wales, the green transition has to be fair in practice, not only in principle. Renewable energy can support new jobs, new skills and stronger local economies, but only if communities are part of the design from the beginning.
A place-based skills system starts by asking what people need in order to participate. It then builds the pathways, support and investment around them. That is how the clean energy transition can create lasting social and economic value for Wales.
