Policy brief

Energy efficiency renovation of buildings: how to meet the recruitment and training needs?

Recruitment difficulties are already high and given the significant retirements expected within the next ten years, planning for the decarbonisation of buildings involves anticipating the employment and training needs of the building industry. Achieving the goals of energy efficiency renovation of buildings will require a significant workforce, with 170,000 to 250,000 additional jobs expected by 2030 [1]. However, there are many uncertainties: what proportion of current workers employed in new building or non-energy-related maintenance-renovation could dedicate yourself to energy efficiency renovation? What specific skills could they need? On the households' side, the challenge is making money available to ensure their solvency and minimising the cost that they could be borne. On the industry side - where small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) prevail - the challenge is to develop a comprehensive and efficient renovation supply which is consistent with needs.

Published on : 20/09/2023

Temps de lecture

2 minutes

Strongly supported by public subsidies, the demand from households determines the labour needs of companies. Consequently, redirecting these public subsidies toward efficient renovation requires better targeting and enhanced quality control of the work. Once these conditions met, it is also essential to ensure that the training system is prepared to meet this demand. However, there still to undertake many actions making building occupations more attractive and developing continuing education. Currently, the workers trained in efficient and comprehensive energy renovation, as well as the companies providing guarantees of work quality are not enough.

Therefore, we identify key measures to address the volume of available workers and the quality of energy renovations: increasing the number of workers available to carry out these type of tasks; increasing the number of young people trained - especially in execution-related occupations - and adjusting the training offer to the differentiated needs of regions; strengthening the provision of continuing education for emerging occupation ; adapting professional standards and certification to the specific skills required for efficient energy renovation.

The opinions expressed in this document are those of the authors
and are not intended to reflect the position of the government.

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