Recommendation 21

HM Government · verbatim extract Accepted

We recognise the need for long term growth and skills development in the energy efficiency and heat pump markets as we continue to decarbonise the housing stock towards our net zero target. This is part of our wider work to invest in the UK’s most important asset—our workforce—to ensure that people have the right skills to deliver the low-carbon transition and thrive in the high- value jobs this will create. We are determined to seize the once-in-a-generation economic opportunities of the net zero transition by creating new business opportunities and supporting up to 2 million green jobs by 2030 across all regions of the UK. To ensure we have the skilled workforce to deliver net zero and our Ten Point Plan, we have launched the Green Jobs Taskforce, working in partnership with business, skills providers, and unions, to help us develop plans for new long-term good quality, green jobs by 2030 and advise what support is needed for people in transitioning industries. The Green Jobs Taskforce chaired by BEIS Energy Minister Anne-Marie Trevelyan and DfE Skills Minister Gillian Keegan, forms part of the government’s ambitious Ten Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution. The taskforce will conclude its work in summer 2021, with the actions feeding into our Net Zero Strategy to be published later in the year. We are investing significant amounts of funding. On home retrofit specifically, the Green Homes Grant Skills competition worth £6.9m is delivering over 8,000 new training opportunities. We have the programmes in place now—including Apprenticeships, Skills Bootcamps, Traineeships, T Levels, and the forthcoming National Skills Fund—to help us grow future talent pipelines and deliver the skilled individuals we will need. And the Lifetime Skills Guarantee will help people train and retrain at any stage of their lives and so develop the skills most valued by employers. With help from the Taskforce, we will ensure that these programmes can be directed to support the net zero agenda, and to identify where the evidence tells us we might need to go further or faster.