Celebrating Net Zero Week 2024: Bridging engineering and manufacturing skills gaps for a sustainable future

Enginuity's guest blog post by Kate Young

The new Labour Government has taken the helm during Net Zero Week 2024, which couldn't be more timely given their prioritisation of climate and skills. 

These two areas are inextricably linked, and it's proving increasingly difficult to ignore the skills needs of a green economy when looking ahead to the future. Government policy over the next five years will be crucial for both: supporting the UK's current and incoming workforce, and making progress on our decarbonisation targets.

If Labour are able to anchor their ambitions for skills policy firmly within their green industrial plan, there will be huge potential to address the skills gaps that are currently holding back the growth of the UK's manufacturing and engineering sectors. 

The benefits from this cannot be overstated - chiefly the realisation of highly skilled jobs in green industries across areas of the UK that need them most. What a green skills plan offers is a genuine solution to address regional inequality, grow the UK economy and reduce emissions in hard-to-abate sectors.

What does such a plan mean in practice? For the engineering and manufacturing sector, we must upskill and reskill workers as their sectors decarbonise, we must create transparent and accessible career paths to create a more diverse incoming workforce, and cultivate a simple and flexible funding system for training. 

As Net Zero Week 2024 comes to an end, and a new Government begins its work, there is no time like the present!

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Enginuity is committed to championing sustainability and driving positive change in engineering and manufacturing through our charitable activities.

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