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Overview

This report outlines the nature of skills essential for increasing renewable energy deployment in India (especially in the solar sector) and lays out a roadmap to upgrade these skills.

Released during the Make in India week held in February 2016, the analysis (in collaboration with the NRDC India) found that solar developers will need a multitude of skilled workers across every phase of a solar project. To reach 100 GW of solar by 2022, India would need nearly 2,10,800 skilled site engineers and approximately 6,24,600 semi-skilled technicians for construction, most of whom would be needed to achieve the targeted 40 GW rooftop solar capacity addition.

This brief was released along with a companion analysis of the skill gap in the wind energy sector in India.

Key Findings

• India’s 100 GW solar target would generate more than 1.1 million jobs by 2022 spread across business development (2%), design and pre-construction (3%), construction and commissioning (72%), operations and maintenance (23%).
• Around 81,000 highly skilled workers would be needed annually by 2022 to carry out annual and ongoing performance monitoring of solar projects.
• An additional 1,82,400 workers would be needed annually by 2022 to carry out low-skilled operation and maintenance functions for solar rooftop and utility scale projects.
• To reach the 40 GW target for rooftop solar by 2022, India needs around 2,10,800 skilled site engineers and approximately 6,24,600 semi-skilled technicians for construction.
• One prominent challenge is the availability of appropriately skilled manpower. The solar sector would benefit from employing workers from conventional labour markets with relevant skill sets.
• Other key challenges for the solar sector include a shortage of platforms to advertise for solar jobs, low salaries, lack of local proximity to training institutes, poor quality of existing training programs, etc.
• The 65 GW wind target is projected to create a further 1,83,500 jobs across the various phases of wind deployment.
• The wind sector is constrained by a lack of transferability of skills, which limits the movement of skilled workforce between industries. It also places more importance on in-house and on-the-job skilling,

Key Recommendations

• Improve training and certification programs, which are accessible to workers of varying backgrounds and skill sets in all states.
• Develop renewable energy training clusters near ongoing renewable energy projects.
• Consider mobile training courses, and common platform and technology to achieve consistency in training programs
• Examine industry needs and target skills most difficult to hire for, in training programs.
• Seek employees in existing traditional fields to provide overlapping skills, in order to fill the gap quickly.