‘One apprentice a day for the next decade’ with hundreds in city
BRITISH GAS PLEDGE AS PM AND CHANCELLOR VISIT TRAINING SITE
THE boss of Centrica – parent company of British Gas – has revealed the company is creating 3,500 apprenticeships over the next decade, including hundreds of posts in Leicester.
Centrica chief executive Chris O’Shea said its Aylestone Road base was now its flagship UK training centre, as it moves towards being a zero carbon energy provider.
And he said a third of the 650 or so recruits taken on so far were female – compared to a previous figure of just 8 per cent of the engineering workforce. The ambition is for half of all new recruits to be women.
Mr O’Shea spoke as he hosted a visit by Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Chancellor Rishi Sunak to the Leicester training site on Monday.
They were given a chance to see apprentices going through their paces and hear how the business is moving away from fossil fuels.
The Prime Minister and the Chancellor also unveiled the company’s 500th electric vehicle, one of 3,000 Vauxhall Vivaro e-vehicles bought over the past two years, representing the biggest electric vehicle fleet order in the UK so far.
British Gas has training centres in Dartford, Hamilton and Thatcham as well as Leicester, and the new workers – called smart energy experts – will install and maintain carbon-efficient technologies including electric vehicle charging points, heat pumps and hydrogen boilers.
Mr O’Shea said British Gas already sells 100 per cent renewable and nuclear electricity and is planning to replace traditional gas with hydrogen, which he said can be used in much the same way but without the dirty by-products.
He said: “We were very happy to have the Prime Minister and the Chancellor visit, principally to talk about the commitment we are making to recruit
3,500 apprentices this decade – one apprentice for every day of the decade.
“They were also here to talk about how we meet the UK’s net zero ambitions, how we decarbonise the energy system, including heating, and to talk about electric vehicles – we have the largest electrical fleet in the UK.”
Mr O’Shea said the first part of the training is to learn how to install smart meters, then the new engineers can be “upskilled” to install other green tech, including at-home and business car chargers, as well as hydrogen gas boilers.
He said: “I think the government has announced no natural gas boilers in new homes from 2025 onwards, but I think the question has got to be around how you transition from natural gas to carbonfree gas – to hydrogen. “Large-scale projects such as hydrogen production take time to come in, so there should be a managed transition. “We need a combination of increased heat pumps which are run on electricity and hydrogen in the gas system in order to deliver net zero.”
He said reaching national net zero would take a joint effort between government, industry and consumers which, he said, although not easy, was achievable.
He said: “We’ve got to work together to find the best way to deliver this, but I think the government should be commended for their leadership in this area in legislating for net zero because you need that drive, without that you will not achieve it.”
The Prime Minister said it was “totally futuristic stuff”, describing the British Gas training centre as “unbelievable”.
In a joint interview with the Mercury and BBC Radio Leicester, he said: “These are high-wage jobs – they will leave their apprenticeships on £29,000 and they will have a fantastic skill.
“What it shows for me is the connection between saving the planet,
cutting CO2, making sure the UK is the lead as we go into COP26 at the end of the year – but creating jobs as well.
“British Gas is really forwardlooking. They are looking at how they can start to transform their output from hydrocarbons to hydrogen – liberating the hydrogen from the hydrocarbons, as it were.
“What I don’t think people realise is the existing gas network, which 85 per cent of homes are on, is capable of taking hydrogen.
“And indeed, back in the seventies what was called the ‘town gas’ network actually had 55 per cent hydrogen on it.
“We won’t be going back to that, because that was quite dirty stuff – with lots of naphtha and what-haveyou as well – but this will be a really clean and renewable approach.”
These are high-wage jobs – they’ll leave their apprenticeships on £29,000 and have a fantastic skill
Boris Johnson