Secure, well-paid green jobs hiding in plain sight across Britain according to new study

Plumbers, sparkies and ex-oil hands are quietly retraining for secure, well-paid work, and they are doing it faster than the experts can keep up

Here is something to feel good about. All over Britain, ordinary working people are landing stable, well-paid jobs in the new clean energy economy, and a lot of them are doing it without going back to college for years on end. That is the picture painted by new figures in the LinkedIn UK Green Skills Report.

Old skills, new jobs

Take the plumbers and gas boiler engineers. The skills they already have, pipework, central heating, the lot, transfer almost directly to fitting heat pumps in people’s homes. One major firm, Octopus Energy Services, is retraining qualified tradespeople in as little as two to three weeks at its own training centres. Thousands have already made the jump. Apprentices on its scheme are paid while they learn and can expect to earn over £40,000 a year by the time they qualify.

And the appetite is enormous. When that firm launched its heat pump apprenticeship in 2024, 2,000 people applied in the first three weeks. Up in the Humber, one training organisation gets 600 to 700 apprenticeship applications a year for around 120 places. In Aberdeen, the city that built its fortune on North Sea oil, a new £10 million skills hub is helping local workers move into wind and other clean energy work. Roughly 90% of the area’s oil and gas workforce already has the skills to make the switch.

The doom-mongers have got it wrong

This is the part the doom-mongers always miss. We are repeatedly told that ordinary people get left behind when industries change. The report’s figures say something different. The number of full-time jobs in Britain’s clean industries jumped by nearly 28% between 2015 and the end of 2024, climbing from around 500,000 to more than 650,000. Workers with these skills are now being hired 38% faster than the workforce as a whole. In plain English: if you have the right skills, you get the job.

Good for your wallet too

It is good news for your wallet. New clean power contracts signed over the next few years are expected to add enough capacity to create up to 10,000 jobs while bringing down household and business energy bills, according to research cited in the report. The engineers fitting heat pumps, solar panels and electric vehicle chargers are connecting homes to cheaper, cleaner power. One Octopus apprentice put it simply, saying he believes the kit he installs “works in homes, and it will make energy bills cheaper for everyone”.

For many of these workers, it is life-changing. One apprentice from Leeds, who could not previously afford to take on a low-paid role, said the opportunity had “changed the trajectory of my life”, giving him the confidence to think about buying a home and starting a family. That is what secure, decent work does. It lets people plan a future.

A catch worth fixing

There is a catch, and it is a hopeful one. The report finds demand for these workers is growing almost twice as fast as the number of people gaining the skills to fill the roles. The jobs are there. The bills savings are there. What is missing, so far, is enough training places and clear routes in, especially for young people, who are queuing up for these careers in their thousands.

That is exactly the kind of thing we can fix, together, if we make enough noise about it. Britain has the workers, the will and the wages on offer. We just need the people in charge to keep their foot on the pedal.

Want more clean air and secure work for ordinary people? Tell your MP to back the training places that turn this opportunity into jobs in your area.