At Solar & Storage Live London, Xtra spoke to Mark Wakeford, Chairman for EvoEnergy.
Mark discussed solutions to key issues faced by the solar sector, as identified by himself and the Solar Taskforce, the need to upskill talent both senior and junior, and how the UK solar market can take the international lead.
Interview with Mark Wakeford, Chairman for EvoEnergy
“If we’re going to deliver five times the amount of solar in the next 12 years than we’ve done in the last 12 years, it’s going to require an awful lot of our companies.”
Xtra: Could you run us through three problems facing the solar market at the moment, and their solutions?
Mark: The Solar Task Force has arrived at a great number of solutions to a lot of problems that we found, both in trying to find the numbers, and also the qualifications required to support our industry.
The key target was really to professionalise the industry and to raise the competence within the sector, at the same time as bringing a whole lot of new people into the sector to deliver 70GW by 2035. It’s quite a challenge that we set ourselves.
The three ‘take-homes’ for me were: firstly, that the answer is within the sector already. We don’t need government to do a great deal.
Factor One
We’re a new sector operating across the country, and the solutions to how we train and attract people into our sector are already there.
The role for our sector, for our industry, is to now go out to make these things happen. We’ve got to go and bring people into our businesses based upon the opportunities that exist already to work with schools and colleges.
We’ve got to upskill using the opportunities the current qualification systems colleges and schools already provide.
It’s a question of our sector engaging with the opportunities to make this happen. We have to recognise that we compete with everybody else – all the other established businesses and sectors in our economy are already doing these things.
We in solar have got to go out there and sing for our supper, and make sure we get people both into our sector, but also educate them and train them to raise the competence levels. To raise the qualification levels within the sector.
Factor Two
Number two then is around qualifications. The take-home here for me is that the solar industry has not got a single recognised qualification anywhere in the [UK].
We’ve got to work with colleges, we’ve got to work with the sector, to identify what those qualifications are and what’s going to best meet the needs of businesses within the sector.
We’ve got to identify things like solar designers; there are no qualifications to become a solar designer. [We ask] what does that mean? What are the qualifications to get there? What are the knowledge, skills, and behaviours required to deliver a solar design?
We’ve got a lot of work to do on that. One of the key points for me is about the qualifications and skill sets for directors. If we’re going to deliver five times the amount of solar in the next 12 years than we’ve done in the last 12 years, it’s going to require an awful lot of our companies.
The businesses within our sector are going to require a huge amount of support and confidence to make this happen, and that’s dependent on the directors. It’s the board of directors of our businesses who are going to decide whether it’s successful or whether they’ll fail.
The challenge of being on a board of directors is you generally get appointed because you’re good at operations, HR, or finance. When you get to the board you suddenly realise you’ve got to be good at everything. You also say: “I’m here as a director, therefore, of course, I know everything because I’m a director.”
That’s just simply not the case. The skills to be a good, successful director can be taught.
One of the things we have to get our sector [on board with] is the recognition that, whilst we might have survived the solar coaster up till now, a massive increase in productivity and a massive increase in demand means that directors have to be careful around our companies.
One of the key take-homes for me is that our directors need to be qualified and confident in strategy, finance, leadership, and governance. These are things that are important if we’re going to ensure the longevity of our companies.
The crowning glory for me on item number two is ensuring that boards of directors are competent to cope with what will be thrown out over the next 12 years.
Factor Three
The third item is numbers and trying to get the numbers into the sector.
The task force asked us to look at the whole value chain from the planning and inception stages to the operation maintenance stages, followed probably by decommissioning.
We’ve got to come up with the numbers to satisfy this, and there’s still some debate about where those numbers lie. We’re talking about 60,000 people across the entire value chain – in operations, finance, marketing, accounts, and more, and recruiting them.
That’s a lot of people to find and bring into our sector, so we’ve got to look at how that might happen. We’ve been working with colleges, particularly in the FE sector, to find these people and support them.
We’ve also got to work with universities and schools. The Department for Education and Work and Pensions both want information to work with us to promote that within schools. There’s a real opportunity for our sector to take this on.
Young people today are worried about climate change. They’re worried about carbon; being able to go to schools and colleges to say “Come and join our sector, be part of the solution, not part of the problem and make a future for all of the UK” is a really powerful message. It’s working well.
Overall
These are my three take-homes.
One: the answer is in the room. Two: There’s an opportunity here to upskill and we’ve got to do that to professionalise the sector from the boardroom down to the shop floor and right the way across everybody else.
Three: There’s a real opportunity to bring the numbers that we need into the sector, but we do have to engage, we have to make it happen ourselves and not rely on anybody else.
Xtra: What are three major opportunities for the UK solar market in the next 12 months?
Mark: Which three do you pick? There’s a huge number of opportunities.
My background is in construction, and the opportunity to lead and support the UK in carbon reduction with a scalable, low energy cost, adjusted transition into solar and its renewables has to be number one.
We’ve got the opportunity to bring everybody with us, to provide opportunities for everybody in society, to get to those hard-to-reach people and give them rewarding and long-term careers in our sector, and to help the rest of the economy decarbonise.
It’s an awesome opportunity.
Number two is we’ve got the ability for our supply chains to mature, grow, and get better at everything. There’s massive growth that we see within renewables across the spectrum, in particular in solar for our homegrown supply chains, to step up and profit from this transition to net zero.
It’s an opportunity we can’t afford to miss, and we certainly can’t say “Let’s give it all to the Europeans or the Far East.” We’ve got to step up and make it happen ourselves. That’s important.
Third is centred on the people. We’ve got fantastic people in our sector and some great role models that we could be following. There’s an opportunity here for these people to spread the good word, spread the knowledge, and the enthusiasm, and maintain the momentum in our sector.
Xtra: Why is it important to be at Solar & Storage Live London and why are events like this so important?
Mark: Attending events like this is important. It’s very easy to say “It’s a day out of the diary and I’ve got better things to be doing,” but you haven’t.
You do need to be here to see how exciting this sector is, see what passion there is, how keen people are to present their answers and their solutions to the problems that we’re all facing.
It’s important to go and meet people you’ve talked to and see how they’re developing and solving problems. It’s important to see the breadth of technology so you can influence it and solve the problems [the sector is] facing.
It’s only at events like this that we get to see it’s the ability to get people here in one place, excited, demonstrating what they’ve got.
That’s why events like this are important.
