Letter: Green jobs hope

The potential for up to 50,000 jobs to be created in the offshore wind energy sector (your report, 25 August) is welcome news indeed, and will of course require the necessary skills to fill this tremendous number of opportunities.

Our schools, colleges and universities are indeed beginning to gear up to deliver this skilled workforce, often in partnership with the private sector.

For example, Carnegie College in Fife is developing and delivering the first pilot wind turbine service technician apprenticeship programme, a qualification shaped by more than a dozen companies, and the first apprentices will come from two of the leading businesses in the renewable energy sector,

It is close working between employers, schools, colleges and universities that will ensure that we are able to not only fill the skills gaps in the renewable energy sector today, but are also able to forecast and fill the skills gaps of the future, with the necessary training and qualifications provided.

Jacqui Hepburn

Alliance of Sector Skills Councils in Scotland

Castle Street

Edinburgh

-

The report by Scottish Renewables and Scottish Enterprise confirms our long-held belief that Scotland is on the verge of something truly huge when it comes to creating thousands of jobs while generating green electricity.

However, to ensure we are able to fully tap into this job-creating, low-carbon future it is vital that politicians do all they can to secure the investment and develop the necessary infrastructure. The forthcoming Holyrood elections offer political parties the opportunities to set out what they would do to create jobs by tackling climate change.

Last year WWF Scotland, along with other NGOs, produced a report which shows that there is enormous potential to increase generation of electricity from a mix of renewable sources during the next two decades, so much so that by 2030 renewable energy can meet between 60 per cent and 143 per cent of Scotland's projected annual electricity demand. Renewable energy has a critical role to play in helping Scotland reduce our climate change emissions. With careful planning we can fully tap into offshore wind, wave and tidal power while also safeguarding the nation's tremendous marine environment.

(DR) RICHARD DIXON

WWF Scotland

Dunkeld

Perthshire