The International Energy Agency’s new“World Energy Employment 2025” report explains it clearly: the energy sector is creating jobs like few other industries in the world. By 2024, employment has reached 76 million, five million more than in 2019. It is an expansion driven mainly by the growth of renewables, power grids, storage systems, and the entire electrification chain, from electric vehicles to batteries.
But—as is always the case with transitions—there is the flip side of the coin: skills shortages are becoming a structural drag. Many companies report that finding skilled workers is increasingly difficult; the majority say they have had to broaden hiring criteria, revise technical requirements, and reinvent recruitment processes. The most in-demand profiles are not hyper-skilled lab figures: they are technicians, installers, maintenance workers, electricians, plant operators. They are the transition trades, the ones who turn climate goals into real infrastructure. And they account for more than half of the sector’s employment.
Need a 40 percent increase in new admissions
The paradox is obvious: Never before has energy provided jobs, but never before has there been a shortage of people to fill them. The IEA warns that maintaining the pace of the transition would require a 40 per cent increase in skilled new entrants by 2030. Without a strong push for training and targeted public policies, the risk is that we will slow down key projects, increase costs and miss an opportunity for sustainable development that will not come easily. We are not talking about titanic investments: the agency estimates that about $2.6 billion a year in additional training globally would suffice, a minuscule amount when compared with the total volume of education spending worldwide and the enormous economic and climate benefits that would result.
The report also looks beyond the immediate horizon. Under current policy directions, energy employment could grow by an additional 3.4-4.6 million jobs by 2035. If we chose a path consistent with climate neutrality goals, potential growth would approach 15 million additional jobs. These are numbers that are not just about macroeconomics: they mean industrial opportunities, territorial regeneration, new or renewed supply chains, national competitiveness. They mean thousands of businesses looking for staff and not finding them.
A great opportunity
IEA’s conclusion is unequivocal: the energy transition may be one of the greatest employment opportunities of our time, but it is not guaranteed. It requires rapid and targeted training programmes, forward-looking policies, new alliances between businesses, technical schools and universities, and a strong effort to accelerate job mobility from fossil to clean sectors. Without this effort, the boom risks turning into a missed opportunity. It can become one of the pillars of sustainable and inclusive growth that can combine industry, jobs and climate.
