Did you know?

• The largest offshore wind farm in the world - Hornsea 2 – is located 89km off the East Yorkshire coast in the North Sea. It generates enough electricity to power 1.4 million homes.
• When construction of the Dogger Bank offshore wind farm is completed, it will become the worlds largest offshore wind farm generating enough electricity to power up to 6 million homes.
• The Energy Works waste to energy power station in Hull produces enough electricity to power the equivalent of 43,000 homes per year by processing 240,000 tonnes of waste, in the process helping to reduce the UK’s net carbon emissions by offsetting 30,000t of CO2 each year.
• East Yorkshire is home to the largest bioethanol producer in the UK, an ingredient in E10 petrol, which is helping the UK to meet its target of 10% renewable energy in transport.

Will there be opportunities available?

• The energy sector is changing. UK government have set targets to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 and the energy sector will play a key role in this transition, creating many jobs in the process.
• 27% of the UK energy sector workforce are predicted to retire in the next 10 years. Combined with the growth of new and replacement jobs, this means that the sector needs to replace or retrain 48% of its current workforce over the next decade, which equates to 277,000 vacancies.
• The wider Humber region is often referred to as the UK’s Energy Estuary. The south bank of the river Humber is home to power stations, fuel refineries and an offshore wind operations and maintenance hub. Drax, in North Yorkshire, is the UK’s largest single source of renewable electricity in the UK. All these facilities create high-paying employment opportunities.
• To achieve the UK governments target of 50GW of power generated by offshore wind by 2030, the offshore wind workforce in Yorkshire and the Humber is forecast to grow from 1,291 to 14,815 by 2030.
• Industrial decarbonisation could create over 22,000 jobs in the Humber between now and 2050.
• Net zero and the drive for greater energy self-sufficiency in the UK is creating exciting opportunities in gas storage, grid scale battery energy storage systems, solar farms, onshore wind farms, district heating networks, bioenergy and carbon capture and storage.
• Utilising hydrogen production in the UK could support more than 75,000 jobs over the next 15 years.

Source: Energy & Utility Skills Group, OWIC, Humber Industrial Cluster Plan, The Hydrogen Taskforce