<
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/sep/04/us-clean-energy-drive-fuels-shortage-of-engineers-in-australia>
"Australia’s rush to build renewable energy fast enough to replace ageing
coal-fired power stations is being fettered by the US’s own clean energy push
that is luring key talent, particularly engineers, industry officials say.
America’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), passed just over a year ago, will pour
at least US$370bn (A$570bn) into clean energy programs. Groups such as the
Clean Energy Council warn the program “has the potential to permanently tilt
the scales toward the US and hamper our progress in Australia”.
“In the global energy transition, the best talent will be mobile,” the
council’s chief executive, Kane Thornton, said. “The success of our own energy
transition relies on making the case that Australia is an attractive place to
call home and our commitment to renewable energy is solid.”
Jane MacMaster, the chief engineer at Engineers Australia, said the looming
skills shortage was raised by many speakers at an energy transition summit in
Sydney last week.
“It’s a fantastic time to be an engineer but it’s also a very busy time,”
MacMaster said. “There’s definitely a challenge in the supply of the
engineering workforce at the moment, and it’s pretty much across all sectors
and almost all disciplines of the profession.”
MacMaster said the IRA was drawing US engineers home as well as those from
elsewhere. Several nations were considering launching countermeasures that
could further challenge the appeal of working in Australia.
“Australia is competing with other countries [and] our states are competing
with each other,” she said. A confluence of national priorities – from
transitioning to net zero emissions, to building up sovereign manufacturing
capability including for nuclear submarines – was stoking the need for
engineers and other technology workers.
“We need 60,000 more graduate engineers in the next 10 years just to replace …
the engineers that we think will retire”, MacMaster said. Local universities
now only produce about 7,500 four-year graduates annually, many of whom get
snapped up by banks or management consultancies."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
