Government opens £6.9m fund for energy efficiency skills training

Businesses and organisations that offer low carbon home retrofit skills training can now apply for a portion of £6.9m funding designed to bolster the workforce ahead of the launch of the government's Green Homes Grant scheme, it announced today.

The Green Homes Grant Scheme Skills Training Competition, which opened this week, is geared at companies that provide  "accredited training at scale to the low carbon installation sector".

Up to £6.9m of funds are up for grabs for skills training organisations, as the government works to meet twin aims of decarbonising the UK's fuel-poor housing stock and generating green jobs in the wake of the Covid-19 employment crisis.

The skills training subsidy is a critical plank of the £1.5bn Green Home Grants Voucher Scheme, which is set to launch at the end of September and covers two-thirds of the costs of green home improvements - such as insulation, double glazing, electric heat pumps and hydrogen-ready boilers - up to a value of £5,000.

It comes as a report by UK100 backed by energy giant Siemens today estimates retrofitting the England's buildings would require £40bn of investment, alongside training and support to build a "retrofit army" of almost half a million workers to ensure buildings and infrastructure are net zero-aligned.

The government said it hopes to support up to 100,000 jobs in the construction sector through its green homes funding and skills package, which was first announced earlier in the summer as a central to its plank of its 'green recovery' ambitions.

The number of projects funded through the Skills Training Competition will depend on the range and value for money proposed and the quality of the application, the government said, with a maximum of £1m available for each training project. And while the competition is open to companies across the UK, skills training provisions must be targeted at trainees based in England and must be chanelled towards installation standards required by the Green Homes Grant Scheme, which applies to England only, it explained.

BusinessGreen is hosting a Net Zero Skills summit on 12 October, bringing  together all the key stakeholders - corporate executives and union representatives, policymakers and campaigners, graduates and apprentices, teachers and recruiters - to discuss how to tackle the net zero skills challenge and seize the huge opportunities offered by a green recovery. To register for the online event visit the Net Zero Skills Summit website.

• Tweet  
• Facebook  
• LinkedIn  
• Send to  

• Topics
• Skills
• Buildings
• Policy
• Skills training
• green jobs
• Green Homes Grant
• BEIS
• Net Zero Skills Summit
• skills