Help Wanted: Australia Short 70,000 Electrical Apprentices for Renewable Transition

The National Electrical and Communications Association says only 52 percent of apprentices currently complete their training, and women are under-represented.

A man fixes a neon sign board displayed outside a building in Sydney on Feb. 3, 2015. Saeed Khan/AFP via Getty Images

Australia urgently needs 70,000 more electrical apprentices if the government is going to meet the targets of its residential electrification strategy, the National Electrical and Communications Association (NECA) told the Senate Standing Committee on Economics on Feb. 21.

Australia needs to electrify 500 homes every day and triple the pace of retrofitting non-residential buildings to meet its 2050 target of net zero operational carbon emissions, according to a Green Building Council of Australia report.

“Tell me where I’m going to find 30,000 electricians in the next five years,” Kent Johns, NECA’s Head of Government Relations and Policy, asked senators.

He explained that 35,000 electricians would need to be fully trained and in place by 2030 in order to meet the projected workload plus demand from the renewable energy sector.

“Now, that sounds a long way away, but it’s only five years,” he pointed out.

“We’re already halfway through our first intake of apprentices ... [but] the average completion rate for an electrician is around 52 percent. So you have to put something like 70,000 young men and women through the training system to get your 35,000 electricians. That is a huge task that we require.

“If you’re looking at 70,000 apprentices, even if we round it down to 50,000 apprentices going through over the next five years, that’s a Herculean task that our industry and the government needs to face up to, and face up to it very, very quickly.”

The issue goes beyond simply recruiting such a large number, however.

“Where we are having issues is not only just taking on those apprentices today, because they’re required in five years, but [in] housing those and having the tradespeople to train them [to be] the next generation of electricians. And lifting the completion rates of TAFE and other educational facilities is going to take a lot of effort,” Mr. Johns said.

“It is going to require a system, and for the industry-led training organisations like ourselves to work cooperatively and work very, very hard to get these young electricians through.”

Female Participation Around 3 Percent

He called women “the untapped resource in the energy sector,” noting that female participation was currently around three percent.

“We need to get female participation in technology up to 25 to 30 percent in the energy sector.”

NECA was “very good” at boosting completion rates, Mr. Johns claimed, because it used scoring and field officers who took care of apprentices and worked closely with employers and government agencies to implement effective processes.

“That has to be done across the whole of Australia, to lift it from 50 percent where we’re sitting at, [to] 92 percent and female participation has to be lifted,” he said.

NECA has recommended to the Senate inquiry that complete household electrification should occur within the decade prior to the global net zero target of 2050.

This would enable the training and development of an electrical workforce capable of performing the electrical installation work and integrating the enhancing technologies into those installations, and then maintaining that equipment as needed.

The added timeframe would also enable the completion of the considerable volume of existing installations that will require conversions of some kind.

It recommends a dedicated plan, including active mentoring and assistance to apprentices, aiming to increase the number who successfully complete their training and remain in the sector, and dedicated funding for institutions that offer training.