Utilities lack the high-tech workers to digitize

Over the next decade, power and utility companies could see a surge in demand as efforts to address climate change drive countries to shift from fossil fuels to electricity to power transportation and other segments of their economies.

That would require them to update their computer systems to better monitor generation and consumption and digitize swaths of the industry. But there may not be enough skilled workers to make the shift.

In separate reports released this week, the consulting firms Ernst & Young and Deloitte concluded that the power industry has a shortage of tech-savvy employees to handle the digital technologies needed make the shift — a shift that would require managing vast amounts of wind and solar energy, battery storage and other generation.

In a survey of 159 power and utility executives by Ernst & Young, for example, 89 percent said they had too few workers with the right skills to adopt digital technologies.

“Utilities can be the linchpin of a decarbonized economy, if they can effectively execute a plan for digital and develop the workforce to support it,” said Ryan Levine, a principal at Ernst & Young focused on talent development within the energy industry. “However, failure could make them lose market share and become a prime target for disruption.”

IT jobs constitute about 35 percent of all utility job openings, the second-highest share of any nontech industry, according to the Deloitte report. Much of that demand is for data-related skills.

As power companies and utilities digitize more of their operations, they are collecting vast troves of data, and managing that data has become imperative for reliability and efficiency, the Deloitte report said.

Despite that need, 23 percent of the executives surveyed by Ernst &

Young said they won’t have sufficient access to workers with those skills three years from now. Another 45 percent said they would have issues finding workers able to work in artificial intelligence, and 41 percent said they would have issues finding robotic process automation talent.

While those numbers may seem bleak, there is a path to having the labor required to help digitize power and utility companies, said Jim Thompson, vice chairman of U.S. power, utilities and renewables with Deloitte.

Part of the problem is that power companies and utilities still have the image of operating smoke-belching plants, even as they shift to cleaner natural gas and renewables. By emphasizing their key role in the energy transition, they could become more attractive to purpose-driven Millennials, he said.

Giving digital workers the option to work remotely also could attract some who are unwilling to relocate to tech hubs like San Francisco and Boston.

“They’ve been working to rebrand themselves proactively, that the utility company today is not the same as it was,” Thompson said. “I think it’s definitely a long road ahead to make sure they’re attracting those workers.”

Another option is retraining existing workers, but that could prove expensive. Ernst & Young estimated it would cost about $6,295 and a little more than eight months to update an employee’s skills. Deloitte estimated as many as 61,936 employees from fossilfuel-related utilities would need to be retrained by 2035 to keep in line with the country’s goals for lowering greenhouse gas emissions.

Thompson said some of those investments may take years to pay off, but that spending on recruiting and training now will prevent future issues bringing more renewables online and meeting accelerating demand.

“I do think the future is extremely bright and exciting,” he said. “Between now and 2035 we’ll be navigating this journey, but I think it will be worth it and we’ll be in a good place when we get there.”