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    Renewable energy boom stares at talent blackout

    Synopsis

    "The scale of the opportunity is something that is very exciting ... but there is a lack of talent and it is one of the challenges," said Sumant Sinha, chairman and chief executive of ReNew. In the next seven years, India will have to add 60 GW of renewable energy capacity every year to meet its aspirations across power and green hydrogen, and trained manpower is needed for this, he added.

    solar energyAgencies
    Over the last nine years, India has witnessed a sharp increase in renewable energy capacity.
    A lack of trained manpower is proving to be a major bottleneck for Indian renewable energy companies which are struggling for new hires as they expand capacities.

    Companies say they are either forced to send executives overseas to be trained, hire expats or poach employees from existing players.

    "The scale of the opportunity is something that is very exciting … but there is a lack of talent and it is one of the challenges," said Sumant Sinha, chairman and chief executive of ReNew. In the next seven years, India will have to add 60 GW of renewable energy capacity every year to meet its aspirations across power and green hydrogen, and trained manpower is needed for this, he added.

    To address this challenge, ReNew is setting up a training academy in New Delhi which will meet the company's need for trained manpower. "We need manpower for offshore drilling also because there isn't an industry right now. So how do you get people? What is the strategy beyond hiring expats," Sinha asked.

    India is getting ready to float its first offshore wind seabed lease tender shortly and the country will need trained manpower in this segment. The government plans to issue seabed lease tenders for a trajectory of 37 GW by 2030.

    This March, executives at oil-to-telecom conglomerate Reliance Industries, on the condition of anonymity, told ET that the company was forced to send its mid- and senior-level executives to group firm REC Group's facility in Singapore to get trained. In October 2021, its new energy subsidiary had acquired 100% shareholding in Singapore-based PV module manufacturer REC Group from its previous owner, China National Bluestar Group, at a valuation of $771 million.

    Reliance is setting up 20 gigawatt of solar power capacity by 2026. The company plans to use green power for its businesses ranging from manufacturing to retail to telecom in a bid to go net zero by 2035.

    Reliance is setting up a fully integrated solar PV manufacturing complex at Jamnagar by using REC Solar's heterojunction technology (HJT). Since HJT is an advanced technology, talent for that is not available easily, requiring special training.

    Over the last nine years, India has witnessed a sharp increase in renewable energy capacity. With an ambition of reaching 500GW of renewable energy capacity by 2030, the renewable energy deployment pace will further expand in the next seven years. Correspondingly, the need for a skilled workforce will also increase in the coming years.

    According to the Council on Energy, Environment & Water (CEEW), India would require to skill about 840,000 additional people to support renewable energy deployment. In fiscal 2022, the sector employed 164,000 people. A bulk of these jobs will be for construction, operations and maintenance of the plants.

    In the absence of concentrated efforts by renewable energy-rich states such as Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Karnataka to skill local people, the shortage of skilled manpower will also be a regional phenomenon.

    Unlike the large-scale developers who are currently undertaking numerous in-house initiatives to fill the skill gap through on-job training, continuous learning programmes, up-skilling, etc., companies in the distributed renewable energy domains such as rooftop solar, microgrids and small hydro struggle the most with skill shortage in the industry, said Neeraj Kuldeep, senior programme lead at CEEW.

    Kuldeep said DRE (decentralised renewable energy) companies rely on the existing talent pool which is more attracted towards large renewable energy companies as they offer better remunerations and career outlook.

    American manufacturer of solar panels First Solar is sending its newly hired manufacturing employees to its factories in the US, Malaysia and Vietnam, to learn the processes. These employees, when they return to India, help lead the ramp up of its new factories and train the rest of its associates.

    "We aimed to have women make up at least half our manufacturing employees. However, it was challenging finding women who are experienced manufacturing professionals. To overcome this, we changed our hiring strategy to employ as many women as possible in entry-level technical roles," said Sujoy Ghosh, managing director-India, First Solar.

    As the female workforce grows within the company and progresses their careers even beyond First Solar, this initiative will add to India’s pool of women experienced in advanced manufacturing, Ghosh said.


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