New Partnership Commits to Fighting Workforce Crisis

Offshore wind developers Dudgeon Offshore Wind Farm, ScottishPower Renewables and Vattenfall have partnered with the University of East Anglia, Nautilus Associates and The Bridge Trust to improve learning and career opportunities in East Anglia, the UK.

The parties have joined forces to form the STEM Coordination Hub dedicated to developing a solution to improve the learning experience and create new career opportunities for young people in Norfolk and Suffolk.

Over half of the UK’s offshore wind industry is located offshore Norfolk and Suffolk, with a development pipeline that could see over 15GW developed in the next ten years, or half of the industry’s vision to deliver 30GW by 2030 up from 7.5GW today, Nautilus said.

According to the company, an increasingly fragmented STEM education landscape is contributing to a crisis in the talent pipeline, affecting not just offshore wind but almost all sectors.

This industry-funded program will bring together employers with education and academia to transform the STEM provision, directly impacting the future workforce.

The hub also aims to improve parity between the sexes as the UK government’s recent Offshore Wind Sector Deal targets to achieve at least 33% of the workforce to include women by 2030.

The hub will be formally launched in May and will be hosted by the local charity The Bridge Trust.

“The STEM Coordination Hub is a new and disruptive model that we hope will significantly enhance STEM activity in the area,” said Johnathan Reynolds, Managing Director at Nautilus Associates.

“The Hub will focus on the benefits to young learners, but crucially it will also provide support to teachers, non-teaching support staff, parents and guardians, and other influencers too. You never know, we could be educating parents about new career opportunities in the clean energy sectors as well as their children.”