Published on: June 27, 2025 at 10:22 AM

Introduction

The UK’s Modern Industrial Strategy is a 10-year plan to increase targeted investment in the priority sectors with the greatest potential for economic UK growth and security. The Strategy aims to make businesses investment easier by, in conjunction with recently published UK Infrastructure: A 10 Year Strategy, providing the policy certainty and stability needed for long-term public and private investment decisions.

Focussed sector plans are being published alongside the Strategy for those industries deemed to have the greatest potential. This includes the Clean Energy Industries Sector Plan, which cites Energy & Utility Skills research.

The importance of skills is repeated throughout the strategy, with a particular focus on supporting reforms that deliver the skills that employers really need and doing so through agile and responsive systems.

The power, gas, water and waste management industries are all supported by the focussed skills reforms that are integral to the success of the strategy.

The Strategy describes how it will enhance skills and increase access to talent by reforming the skills and employment support system. This will create a strong pipeline into the eight critical sectors identified in the Strategy – the IS-8¹, with opportunities for good quality jobs, an increase in technology-related training and additional support for engineering, digital, and defence skills.

Enhancing and Accelerating Access to Talent

The Strategy describes the Government’s approach to skills system reform, that will benefit all organisations in the energy and utilities sector, in order to:

Ensure that the skills system and employment support are aligned to strategic economic priorities, including the needs of the IS-8 and transformative opportunities like AI.
Encourage engagement and investment from employers to address skills gaps and build talent pipelines, including by working with Skills England to identify needs and co-develop solutions. Skills England will also work with devolved governments to create a coherent and accessible skills system for the IS-8 to access across the UK.
Promote evidence-based initiatives, as set out in our Sector Plans, aimed at improving workforce diversity to support business and economic growth. Diversity in the workforce is critical to attracting and retaining talent in the IS-8

Specific targeted interventions include:

Ensuring there are sufficient courses to support an additional 65,000 16 to 19 year olds in England by 2028-29, including providing key pathways into the IS-8.
Ensuring that funding is provided to address the challenges of recruiting and retaining high-quality teachers in Further Education, especially for courses covering skills in shortage in priority sectors.
Investing in the estate and facilities needed to deliver priority training.
Continuing to roll out shorter duration and foundation apprenticeships to give more people the opportunity to learn and earn in IS-8 sectors from August 2025.
Introducing short courses in England, funded through the Growth and Skills Levy², in areas such as digital, artificial intelligence and engineering.
Working with Skills England to determine the short courses which will be prioritised in the first wave of rollout and subsequent waves, and how those sit alongside apprenticeships and other training routes.
From January 2027, launching the Lifelong Learning Entitlement which will enable individuals to learn, upskill and retrain across their working lives. The first modular courses for approval will support progression into the IS-8.
Further supporting adult learners to meet skills needs in the IS-8 via Skills Bootcamps, Sector Based Work Academy Programmes and Free Courses for Jobs.
Continuing the planned roll out of shorter duration (eight month minimum) apprenticeships, and Foundation Apprenticeships from August 2025.
Engaging with industry and other partners to develop skills passports, building on best practice and learning from previous examples.
Providing £1.2 billion of additional investment in skills per year by 2028-29 alongside further support from measures outlined in the Restoring Control over the Immigration System policy paper published in May.
Agreeing Workforce Strategies for sectors facing shortages linked to skills, training, and conditions in the UK, with a set of tangible actions to move the dial and support good jobs.

Transforming the UK into a ‘clean energy superpower’

The Strategy restates the ambition for the UK to become a clean energy manufacturing and innovation superpower by 2035 and estimates that business investment in frontier clean energy industries³ will at least double to over £30 billion per year.

The Global Clean Power Alliance, a new supply chain mission, will identify and deliver the most critical changes needed to diversify clean energy supply chains and address bottlenecks.

Great British Energy (GBE) and the National Wealth Fund will provide a strong end-to-end development and finance offer. The Government has already identified an initial £300 million for investment into domestic offshore wind supply chains through GBE.

The Strategy commits to:

Support electricity networks as a foundational enabler to growth, building on thriving domestic supply chains to create jobs and capture domestic and global opportunities through ambitious deployment plans, reforming the connections process and ensuring the sector benefits from public finance institutional support.
Utilise the skills of our existing energy workforce and give a new lease of life to industrial and coastal communities, benefiting every nation and region of the UK.
Deliver joint commitments from both government and industry as partners, and work hand-in-hand with trade unions to create high-quality jobs.

Specific interventions include:

£1 billion Clean Energy Supply Chain Fund under Great British Energy, including £300 million to invest in offshore wind supply chains.
£544 million Clean Industry Bonus for offshore wind developers.
£14.2 billion of funding for Sizewell C in this Spending Review period and over £2.5 billion for Small Modular Reactors
£2.5 billion of investment in fusion over the next five years.
£9.4 billion in capital budgets to support the development of CCUS projects up to 2029.

The Clean Energy Industries Sector Plan, which accompanies the main document, refers to Energy & Utility Skills’ workforce research (reiterating that women are under-represented in the energy and utilities sector, making up just 28% of the workforce, and that those from ethnic minority backgrounds are also under-represented, at 8.9%. This reinforces the importance of Energy & Utility Skills Sector attraction strategy and inclusion commitment.

Devolved approach

In line with the ‘place-based’ approach to investment outlined in the UK Infrastructure Strategy, the Strategy also seeks to target the places and clusters across the UK that support the IS-8, increasing national productivity, strengthening economic security and resilience, and supporting environmental goals and the net zero transition.

This policy approach is designed to strengthen local business environments across the UK, with increased support for regional innovation (through the new £500 million Local Innovation Partnerships Fund)..

There will be support for Mayors and local authorities in England, including by working together on delivery of 10-year Local Growth Plans and creating a new £500 million Mayoral Recyclable Growth Fund. The significant proportion of the Adult Skills Fund devolved to Mayoral Strategic Authorities targets local skills needs in line with Local Growth Plans and Local Skills Improvement Plans.

As also set out in the Infrastructure Strategy and the Spending Review, the Strategy reiterates commitment to renew partnerships in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, including through close collaboration with devolved governments and through flagship sectoral investments, such as supporting the Acorn CCUS project in Scotland. As education policy is devolved, the Government will partner with devolved governments to align approaches on shared skills priorities in the IS-8.

UK Infrastructure: A 10 Year Strategy

The Infrastructure Strategy compliments the Modern Industrial Strategy and describes investment of at least £725 billion over the next decade.

Sector

Water: water companies to quadruple investment in new water infrastructure over the next five years, including developing 9 new reservoirs.
Flood resilience: ensuring long term readiness via the 10-year flood defence investment programme
Nuclear energy: investment to enable one of Europe’s first Small Modular Reactor programmes and for nuclear fusion, alongside Sizewell C
Clean energy: including investment by GB Energy, the UK’s first regional hydrogen transport network and store, strategic electricity transmission network investment and electric vehicle charging infrastructure.
Clean energy has its own dedicated chapter in the strategy: ‘Becoming a clean energy superpower’. This reflects the government’s mission to make the UK a clean energy superpower by delivering clean power by 2030 and accelerating to net zero. It includes delivery of a flexible, low carbon electricity system by 2030, as outlined in the Clean Power Action Plan, and continued investment in Carbon Capture, Usage and Storage (CCUS) and low carbon hydrogen.
It also includes decarbonisation of the waste sector, by transitioning to a circular economy, reducing landfill and incineration, and ensuring that new ‘energy from waste’ plants are carbon capture-ready.

Workforce and skills

The Strategy recognises that the UK’s infrastructure needs will only be delivered if it has a workforce with the necessary skills.
It states that reliable investment plans and an infrastructure pipeline will give industries the certainty and information to invest in the right skills to build the capacity needed.
The pipeline will also inform and support the government’s own approach to skills and wider supply chain management and Skills England will collate a national picture of skills gaps by working closely with mayoral strategic authorities.
Bodies such as the Office for Clean Energy Jobs will build a clear picture of skills gaps and support needs in individual sectors.
Young people will be supported into growth-driving and priority sectors through new foundation apprenticeships and £1.2 billion of additional resource investment in skills per year by 2028-29. This includes funding to support over 1.3 million 16–19-year-olds to access high-quality training, supporting 65,000 additional learners per year by 2028-29. (There is generally a strong emphasis on the construction sector.)

The Strategy states that sector-specific supply chain support is already being provided. For example, Great British Energy will provide £300m to invest in supply chains for domestic offshore wind.

Impacts and Benefits

The ambitions of the Strategy, taken with other recent policy documents, such as the immigration white paper, demonstrate integration with the Government’s ambitions on skills. This will see positive impacts across the energy and utilities sector.

The Strategy’s cross-sector support for the Lifelong Learning Entitlement, Skills Bootcamps, Sector Based Work Academy Programmes, Free Courses for Jobs, Foundation Apprenticeships, and skills passports is welcome and Energy & Utility Skills’ members will have an interest in aligning these offers with their skills demands.

Energy and Utility Skills will work with members on the determination of the short courses that will be funded through the Growth and Skills Levy. Our ongoing sector research will be promoted through our close Stakeholder engagement with Government to inform the skills solutions and offers that the Strategy supports. Offers emerging under Skills Bootcamps, Sector Work Based Academy Programmes and Foundation Apprenticeships will be informed by our occupational profiling and mapping to ensure the embedding of employer-validated occupational competencies. We will continue our work on skills passporting to ensure the maximum of support for transitioning workers.

The Strategy intends to bring the confidence that private investors need to commit funds alongside the public investment in sectors that will drive growth. In turn this will drive workforce demands. Our Sector Attraction Strategy will support the coordinated efforts needed to recruit and retain the many more people that the sector will need.

Conclusion

The above continues to demonstrate how high the skills agenda sits across government. Skills are now, rightly, viewed as a much more significant and ‘hard’ business metric and risk factor than they may have been in the past. Our engagement across government is active, collaborative, and focused on making a positive difference for members, industry, government and individuals.

Next steps

The Office for Clean Energy Jobs will publish a full Clean Energy Workforce Strategy in the Summer, setting out further actions to ensure delivery of the clean energy workforce and high-quality jobs. The Strategy will be focused on the key barriers to achieving the skilled workforce we need.

If you would like further information please contact carl.jordan@euskills.co.uk or grace.storey@euskills.co.uk

References

The Industrial Strategy 8 (IS-8) are Clean Energy Industries, Advanced Manufacturing, Creative Industries, Defence, Digital & Technologies, Financial Services, Life Sciences, Professional & Business Services
The Growth and Skills Levy will be an apprenticeship levy flexibility in England that will allow levy paying organisations to spend a proportion of their levy funds on skills and training investments other than apprenticeship standards.
The frontier clean energy industries are wind (onshore, offshore and floating), nuclear fission, nuclear fusion, hydrogen, carbon capture utilisation and storage, and air/ground source heat pumps.