Targeted training to the drive the Green Technology revolution:

South Gloucestershire and Stroud College are about to enter the brave new world of training for retrofitting and renewable energy.

Ian Mean, MBE, Business West Director and Deputy Chair at GFirst LEP talks to SGS College about it green ambitions…

After winning £450,000 through Stroud District Council from the Gloucestershire Strategic Economic Development Fund, and over £700,000 via the Department for Education Strategic Development Fund, SGS are creating the Berkeley Low Carbon Training Centre.

It will be based on their campus at Berkeley and will train apprentices and upskill those working in the renewable energy sector. They will include installers and specifiers for solar, heat pumps and retrofitting for homes.

The new centre will also play a trailblazer role in developing training courses and materials that can be utilised by other training centres to expand capacity.

SGS Principal Sara-Jane Watkins said: ”There are lots of well-meaning individuals in Gloucestershire where they have all got an interest in climate emergency but nobody is co-ordinating it. We are trying to take that concern and turn it into something tangible”.

“The actual courses on the ground do not exist yet. In collaboration with the other colleges in Gloucestershire, we are trying to pull together the whole skills piece”.

“What we are missing are the individuals with the knowledge to retrofit all these new technologies”.

“We need to make them smart but also develop the knowledge to retrofit all these new technologies into existing homes, properties and industrial buildings”.

A new world of opportunity for apprentices and employers:

Pat McLeod, the SGS projects Assistant Principal, is in my view the very best person to deliver the curricula and training for the college’s new Low Carbon Training Centre and he is very clear about the importance of delivering a curriculum, for low carbon training after a long career driving apprenticeships.

“This is really pioneering work”, says Pat.” It is quite brave to develop a special centre like this. We have taken a big leap of faith”, He says the most immediate benefit of the centre will be felt by the college’s apprentices. “We are putting around 400 apprentices a year through plumbing and electrical apprenticeships.

“But now we have got to future proof them as they are not going to be spending a big proportion of their working life on gas boilers”.

Updating the existing plumbing and electrical apprenticeships can be a slow process. So, current apprentices will be the first through the new centre and will get some heat pump and solar training as a bonus.

The opportunities for apprenticeships and re-training are enormous.

“The forecasts for the number of green jobs in this sector are huge”, commented Pat.

It is said that about 350 000 heat pump engineers are going to be needed.

“I have seen comparisons with the smart meter challenge and how do we train up so many installers. But retrofit dwarfs this by factors of tenfold. Just think of every property that needs to be retrofitted.

“We are still building houses that need to be retrofitted - absolutely crazy”.

“If I was a young person, I would be looking at this space now and carving out a niche for myself by getting this expertise we will now be able to offer at Berkeley.

“This is going to be a burgeoning sector with good jobs for our young people in the future and great opportunities for employers in this world of green, low carbon technology.

“We have almost got to re-think how we define all our construction training curricula. As soon as you take a solar panel out of a box it is generating electricity”.

What we need now, of course, is a national policy from government so training experts like Pat McLeod and colleges like SGS know where the need is going to come first.

Berkeley and the new Low Carbon Centre - a perfect fit:

Pete Barrett, Group Property Manager of SGS, says that the college’s new Low Carbon Training Centre at Berkeley truly reflects the “Green” credentials of Gloucestershire as a county. When Berkeley was set up in 2016, Pete says GFirst LEP wanted the campus to be a “strategic economic asset”.

Pete commented: “Gloucestershire is a great Green county, and we are proud that the college is part of that whole low carbon mix as an asset and Stroud has almost a UK brand for being Green”.

“Our new centre is so important because the college wants to run training courses to ensure the local economy has all the skills it needs”.

“Time and again we are seeing housebuilders not putting green technologies into their new houses”.

“But they must start doing the right thing with the new technologies and they must do it now”.