Now that the dust has settled on COP28 there’s a feeling that the politicians who finally hammered out a resolution all the countries involved could sign up to will be looking around with a sense of ‘Well, who’s going to make this happen then?’.

Whether the semantics of making a transition to renewables rather than phasing out fossil fuels turns out to make any significant difference to how the net zero agenda plays out, the IET spoke up in UAE with events to highlight the results of an important new survey that identified an underappreciated obstacle.

In August and September 2023, The IET commissioned independent research agency YouGov to quiz more than two thousand engineering employers from all over the world about their current priorities and challenges around climate change. The focus was on what sustainability skills they believe are needed in the near future, how hard it is to recruit people with those skills, and how they are responding.

At least 80% of respondents in most countries surveyed say that they are concerned about the impact of climate change on their organisation. Fewer than 5% of companies across 8 countries say they have all the skills to be resilient to climate change and a lack of skills is the most common barrier to reaching net zero for engineering employers.

COP28 saw a launch event for the report, hosted by IET President Gopichand Katragadda, followed by a lively discussion of 'Skills Development and Technological Tipping Points for Net Zero', a side event within COP’s Blue Zone, that’s available to view at https://spkl.io/60444s1fA.

Discussion of the gaps between the skills young professionals acquire in higher education and the industry's expectations reinforced the survey’s finding that collaboration between industry and academia is key to delivering graduates with the skills employers need.

Most countries surveyed selected technical and engineering skills as their top priority. For those that didn’t, it was innovative thinking (Saudi Arabia), an agile mindset (Brazil) and whole systems thinking (China).) Across the board, however technical skills were less likely to be selected as missing rather than those related to mindset.

This echoes the survey’s findings about the skills that countries feel they need in order to be resilient to climate change. Other than specialist environmental or sustainability skills, it was the softer skills that were most likely to appear in countries’ top three selections.

Engineering employers say they value things like having an agile mindset, whole-systems thinking and the ability to solve complex problems when looking to recruit new employees at any stage of their career. These were also among the most common answers that countries selected around the skills they think are most needed to deliver a sustainability strategy. Technical skills are also highly valued, but it looks like a more rounded approach to skills prioritisation is becoming common, and this is reflected in the skills expected from new entrants to the workforce.

Of the skills most needed, solving complex problems is the most needed skill in Malaysia, with more than half of companies saying they are missing this; China is more than twice as likely as the UK to say it needs digital skills to be resilient to climate change; the UK is twice as likely to say that they need leadership and management skills for resilience than Germany. Employers in China are the least confident that their organisation has the skills to be resilient to climate change, but the most confident that their country overall has the skills needed to meet net zero targets.

It’s not just a question of finding new graduates who are just entering the workforce. In many countries, fewer than 6% of companies said they don’t struggle to attract the right skills from the external labour market. At best, this figure only rose to 12%.

The most common method of responding, mentioned most frequently in eight of the ten countries surveyed, is by training existing employees. Exceptions are the USA, where firms are more likely to continue looking to hire skills externally, and Germany, where increasing contingent labour was the top answer.

Regardless of specific missing skills, the UK is the only market where respondents feel that the education system does not prepare its young people well for work in industry, with around a third of employers (35%) saying it does. This is far lower than all other countries – the next lowest is Malaysia with 65%, while 95% of Chinese firms are happy with their country’s education system. Despite the variation in confidence, there is clear agreement about what the academic sector at university level and businesses need to do to improve the skills pipeline. In every country, collaboration between academia and industry was among the top three answers.

Talking points

As well as identifying trends and challenges, the IET’s report on its International Green Skills Survey 2023 makes a series of recommendations for global stakeholders. Regarding the lack of skills being the most common barrier to reaching net zero for engineering employers, these include:

Businesses should prioritise training and upskilling that focuses on resilience skills, particularly around innovative thinking and problem solving. They should also include sustainability content and themes across leadership programmes, to encourage strategic thinking by those responsible for forming sustainability strategies

Businesses and academic institutions should facilitate connections and opportunities between universities and employers. They need to make existing pathways clear, help universities to create new ones where possible and maximise the opportunities for students to interact with businesses throughout their degrees

Is anything missing? Read the full report on the survey and tell us what you think.

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