Wind energy was once considered a potential job engine – until the construction of new wind turbines came to a standstill. The federal government’s ambitious expansion plans now give hope for a second and more sustainable attempt.
In the coming years, the wind industry will be looking for workers for the expansion of renewable energies on a large scale. The expected doubling of the installed wind power capacity by 2030 “cannot be done without increasing the workforce”, according to the managing director of the Federal Wind Energy Association, Wolfram Axthelm. This will “not mean that you have 100 percent more staff, but there will be a significant increase in staff,” he added. “We’re talking about tens of thousands.”
Significant increase in staff: tens of thousands of cleantech jobs needed
On the one hand, companies are confronted with the shortage of skilled workers, which almost all sectors of the economy have been complaining about for some time. “Almost everyone in the industry is currently hiring new people and then they realize that you are competing with others, that you have to make an effort to find people,” says Axthelm. In addition, companies in the wind industry are still struggling with the aftermath of the enormous downsizing in recent years, a consequence of the sluggish expansion of wind energy.
“We lost around 50,000 jobs across the entire industry in 2019/2020,” said Axthelm. That corresponds to about a third of the jobs. «This is now our heavy backpack that we carry around with us. We feel the same way as in gastronomy. Once you’ve left and found a new job, I can’t snap my fingers and they’ll come back.” In addition, each of the former employees “probably told ten people during this forced departure from the industry how bad it all is, that he lost his job, so that we now have to rebuild the trust that politics brought us”.
The consequence, according to Axthelm, is: “As an industry, we have to learn that we make ourselves more visible – and you can no longer simply say that we will find people from our own workforce through word-of-mouth propaganda.”
Great potential for wind energy branch in auto industry
For example, the wind industry has been working together with the energy company Leag in Lusatia for around a year on a publicly funded project: “It’s about defining what job profiles they have and what job profiles we will need in the future,” said Axthelm. “We often hear that the energy transition will ultimately bring more employment, but that is of no use to anyone in Lusatia. They want to know how I personally have a perspective.
We said that as an industry we have to take more responsibility for ourselves in order to give people in their home region a perspective.”
The wind industry sees great potential in the automotive industry. There are many “people who no longer have any real employment in the automotive supplier sector due to the shift to e-mobility, but they could stay in their own company in the wind sector,” said Axthelm.