Generating skills to secure a hydrogen-fuelled future
Fundamental to the continued growth of hydrogen is enhancing skills. Chris Steel, Hydrogen Lead at Business West, explains the role Hydrogen South West is playing to ensure a sustainable future.
There is a huge amount of positive activity happening in the fast growing hydrogen sector. But there is a growing risk that we won’t have a ‘hydrogen-ready’ workforce in place to meet the UK’s ambitions to deliver 20-35 per cent of energy demand through hydrogen*.
To mitigate this risk, organisations like Hydrogen South West (HSW) are hard at work.
HSW is an industry-led collaboration committed to accelerating the South West’s hydrogen economy. Formed in 2022 by ten private sector organisations - including Airbus, Bristol Airport, EDF Hynamics and Wales & West Utilities – HSW is supported by research and innovation communities across the region. All have a shared hydrogen mission; to ensure the area can “Make It”, “Move It” and “Use It”.
A key objective of the consortium is to position the South West as a Centre of Excellence for the skills and research required to maximise the opportunity of the hydrogen economy. And there are a number of key activities underway to support this.
Meeting the skills challenge today
In 2022, HSW worked with a range of partners to focus on industry-defined short-term training needs in the hydrogen sector. The work included:
Working with the High Value Manufacturing Catapult (HVMC) to develop a series of six online Hydrogen Awareness Modules. These 2-3 hour training sessions will launch in April 2023, and are designed to improve understanding of hydrogen technologies and capabilities across companies and its employees.
The West of England Institute of Technology creating a Trailblazer Hydrogen Boot Camp. Funded by the Department for Education (DfE), this 60 hour series of training modules and will be delivered in February - March 2023 and form the first stage in a Level 3/4 Certificate of Hydrogen Technology. A business case will be submitted to DfE in due course, for the long-term funding of this intervention.
Planning for the skills needs of the future
In addition to meeting the industry’s short-term skills needs, there is a need to understand and invest in skills that will be needed over the longer-term.
Therefore, this year, HSW is establishing a Hydrogen Skills Forum. The aim is to bring together academic institutions across the South West in a collaborative forum to better define and align collective action by and between Industry sectors, Universities, Colleges and local and national government.
In parallel, HSW is developing opportunities for the nuclear and hydrogen sectors to work together in delivering on shared skills needs as a prototype collaborative partnership that, if successful, could be scaled nationally.
This hydrogen-driven growth will generate new, high-quality jobs across industries and places.
A National Hydrogen Skills Alliance is also being established. A collaboration between HVMC & Cogent Skills, the Alliance will draw on experts and expertise from across industry, academia and research and technology organisations. Through the Skills Value Chain approach (SVC)[1] it will focus on activities, such as:
Foresighting future long term hydrogen innovation demand - through challenge led foresighting cycles
Providing a framework of skills - aligned to future technology and supply chain needs
While more needs to be done to mitigate the risk of their being a limited ‘hydrogen-ready’ workforce in the South West, work is well underway to meet this challenge head on. We will continue to collaborate with our partners to both highlight and enable the delivery of hydrogen skills across the UK.