“Ready to power up your future?” asks Barnsley College of adults hoping to “break into the booming green energy sector… whether you’re retraining, upskilling, or starting afresh”.
The pitch from the college’s new clean energies training centre for a 10-week solar PV installer and operator course is one of many across the country as providers race to meet demand for solar, heat pump, EV charging installations and retrofit skills.
But behind the upbeat marketing lies a complicated picture: stop-start government funding, a chronic shortage of expert tutors, patchy demand from learners and employers, and concerns that some courses are sold as gateways to green jobs but without the necessary safety training.
The government says clean energy will bring 400,000 extra jobs by 2030 and wants to install 450,000 heat pumps a year by the end of the decade. But the path from policy ambition to classroom delivery is proving anything but smooth.
Selling green dreams
A recurring problem is many green skills courses are easier to sell to beginners, young people or career changers. But the people the market most needs are qualified plumbers and electricians who can upskill.
Courses with no entry requirements include Merton College’s ‘introduction to solar panels’ and Riverside College’s four-week level 3 course in ‘principles & maintenance for the photovoltaic solar panels’. “Learners do not need prior knowledge, we just ask for a willingness to learn,” its website says.
The concern is not that beginners should be barred from green skills training, but that introductory courses can be marketed in ways that imply a much shorter route to competency than industry standards allow.
Insiders fear this creates unrealistic expectations and risks fuelling a problem of rogue traders incorrectly installing equipment or being unable to maintain it.
Completing a short course, they stress, doesn’t provide the competence to install safety-critical technologies.
To fit heat pumps under government-funded schemes, for example, learners must work for, or become part of, a business approved under the Microgeneration Certification Scheme.
Mike Blakeley, chair of the Green Skills Advisory Panel, says there is a “real danger” of people being “sold a course that makes you able to do A, B and C but out the back end of it, there is no licence to practise”.
Mike Blakeley of GSAP
Bootcamp bonanza
Skills bootcamps are one of the government’s favoured tools for rapid retraining. They are short, flexible and are required to offer learners a guaranteed interview. The number of colleges offering bootcamps rose from 52 to 81 in 2024-25.
But Kerry Boffey of the Fellowship of Inspection Nominees (FIN) believes there are “growing concerns about the effectiveness and sustainability of the bootcamp model”.
The unweighted adult skills funding rate is only £6 per hour per learner, and Boffey says FIN is “increasingly hearing reports of corners being cut”, with “online group sessions replacing interactive tutoring”.
FE Week found examples of green skills bootcamps that did not appear to require prior qualifications, including courses preparing people to work with electric vehicles, heat pumps and solar thermal.
Industry experts say such courses can have a place. But in the rush to meet demand, some short courses risk blurring the line between introductory training and occupational competence.
Chris Claydon, JTL
Units outcry
There is a “similar challenge” with the new apprenticeship units, Blakeley added.
Two of the government’s 10 programmes – in electric vehicle charging point installation and solar PV installation and maintenance – have caused some in the electrical sector to blow a fuse.
Andrew Eldred, managing director of the Electrical Contractors’ Association (ECA), said these “government-led ‘products’…pay no heed to sector competence and training standards”, while Chris Claydon, CEO of charity training provider JTL, believes they are “hugely bureaucratic” and still require an electrical qualification to be “tacked on” at the end, involving “additional time and cost”.
The Electrotechnical Skills Partnership (a network of employers, industry bodies and training partners) warns that “for work of this nature, which has direct safety implications, valid regulated assessment is essential… without that, these units cannot and should not be treated as evidence of occupational competence.”
The Chartered Institute of Plumbing and Heating Engineering (CIPHE) favours the apprenticeship route to train people in heat pump work.
But just 80 people started the low-carbon heating technician apprenticeship when it launched in academic year 2024-25, and 40 starts were recorded between August and January this academic year.
And refrigeration air conditioning and heat pump engineering apprenticeship numbers stuttered from 410 in 2023-24 to 350 last year, and 380 so far in 2025-26.
A heat pump course for beginners
Quality concerns
The greatest anxiety from industry experts is not whether courses exist, but whether they are good enough.
Heating engineer and lecturer Nathan Gamble is sceptical of some short heat pump training. “No one is failing these courses,” he says. He does not believe the standard three-day courses assessed through observed assignments and multiple-choice open-book theory tests are enough to prove competence.
CIPHE technical manager Jerry Whiteley is more blunt. Some government-subsidised heat pump training has been “pretty diabolical across the country”, he says. In some cases, “the tutor didn’t know any more than the person sat in front of them”.
Claydon says his team have seen instances of providers selling certificates for electrical qualifications online, without any training taking place.
One electrician who attended a solar panel installation bootcamp told FE Week they were “absolutely horrified” by its quality. The tutor read through regulations and learners “couldn’t ask any questions”. Assessment included multiple-choice questions and photographs of panels learners had installed – which, the learner pointed out, could easily have been someone else’s work.
They passed “with flying colours”, but did not subsequently feel competent enough to do the installations.
Online courses are also drawing scrutiny. Blakeley worries online provision can deliver theoretical knowledge without the practical experience needed to apply it.
Paul Conroy, CEO of training provider Impact Academy, says he recently interviewed 30 candidates for domestic energy assessor and retrofit assessor tutor roles, all of whom said they had completed their relevant industry qualifications online.
When asked about those courses, “100 per cent” told him they were “absolutely useless” because they offered no exposure to real homes.
Beyond publicly funded provision, non-accredited commercial green skills courses for beginners perform well in search rankings.
The top result in FE Week’s Google search for solar PV installation online courses was a course hosted by the San Francisco-based online provider Udemy, with “no prerequisites needed”, which claimed to be “the only online course with everything you need to know on solar energy”. “All the students I work with go on to get a full-time job in the solar industry,” reads the description.
Second in the rankings was an online diploma in sustainable energy from Training Express. Both providers offer huge ‘discounts’ if courses are bought before a clock ticks down.
A solar panels course from US-based provider Udemy
Safety-critical work
Industry bodies argue the risks of inadequate training are real.
Without appropriate safety cut-offs, solar PV systems pose a fire risk. Rooftop solar panel installers need to understand weight-bearing limits. EV charging installers must understand the implications of location and electrical load.
Claydon warns that cutting corners in safety-critical trades is a “ticking timebomb” of fire risk.
“This is the danger of trying to short-circuit training for these core trades,” he says. “We see that from what happened with the Grenfell fire, and how much building regulation has been tightened up since then. To then go backwards is potentially dangerous – we just need properly trained electricians who can then very quickly upskill.”
The National Audit Office’s recent findings on insulation failures underline the point; 98 per cent of homes that had external wall insulation installed under two previous government schemes had problems that could lead to damp and mould. The NAO cited an “under-skilled workforce” as one reason for the failures.
In a subsequent report by the Public Accounts Committee, its chair Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown said the public’s confidence will have “rightly been shaken in retrofit schemes… and government now has a self-inflicted job of work on its hands to restore faith in the action required to bring down bills and reduce emissions”.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown
Demand still uncertain
Partly because of the public fallout from previous policy failures, the market for green skills training is weaker than the policy rhetoric suggests.
In September, 23 providers won bids to deliver training for qualifications in solar panel installation, fabric insulation and retrofitting until July this year under the government’s £8 million warm homes skills programme. It is understood to be significantly underspent. When asked for comment, The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero pointed out it was also providing up to £21 million through its heat training grant to support existing heating engineers to upskill.
Industry evidence suggests 39 per cent of trained heat pump engineers do not go on to install the technology because of weak consumer demand.
Blakeley says young people are interested in green skills. “Without a doubt, young people want to make a difference,” he says. “But we can’t guarantee jobs at the end of that.”
To overcome this problem, Plymouth Council is part-funding a programme that offers independent advice for homeowners on green improvements to help ensure its residents are not being mis-sold to.
Blakeley believes it is these types of micro initiatives that will stimulate the market, by removing “doubt and worry”.
His approach at Exeter College has been to build green skills into mainstream construction and electrical courses rather than create standalone provision that may not lead directly to work.
“At some point policy will shift and drive through this agenda,” he says. “And we’ve already primed everyone to make sure we’re ready for it.”
Policy outpaces provision
Launching a new course takes time. But colleges and training providers are also being asked to place expensive bets on technologies that can shift quickly. Predicting which green technologies will survive political change is even harder, especially given Reform UK’s lack of support for net zero.
The previous government planned to require all new gas boilers to be “hydrogen-ready” by 2026. Some training centres responded by promoting hydrogen awareness courses. But hydrogen for home heating has since fallen out of favour. The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero has now said its role is likely to be limited.
But Riverside College’s “state-of-the-art” hydrogen training centre, opened in 2024, still advertises hydrogen-related courses, telling learners that hydrogen will play a valuable role in low-carbon heating and power.
Colleges face the dilemma of moving too slowly on green skills and missing the market, or moving too quickly and seeing expensive facilities go underused.
David Warnes, principal of Chelmsford College and former head of the Mayor of London’s green skills construction academy network, says it is “very common” for green skills centres to be repurposed for other provision.
Some colleges “jumped quite early”, he says – “probably too early”. The market in some areas is only now beginning to catch up.
Warnes believes that in areas with political momentum behind green skills, colleges are “pushing at an open door”, but it is a “postcode lottery”.
Essex Council is “very committed” to the green agenda, and the pipeline of new homes that need to be fitted with heat pumps locally has given his college the confidence to plan accordingly. But in other areas it is proving hard to build momentum.
David Withey at his SGS Wise campus
Ghost hubs
Capital funding, often linked to local skills improvement plans (LSIPs) calling for more green skills, has helped colleges buy solar panels, heat pumps and retrofit equipment that, in some cases, is now gathering dust.
One college in the home counties said its ground source heat pumps and solar panels bought through LSIP investment had been underused because demand for the training was low.
MidKent College launched a sustainable construction “skills factory” in 2023, but no longer provides those courses.
SGS College received almost £40,000 of shared prosperity funding for green skills training and opened a new centre, but CEO David Withey admits it has been “tricky” to recruit enough learners.
“I would like us to be doing more in it,” he says. “But there is a risk we just build provision that we can’t then fill, because maybe it was too bespoke.”
Technology is also moving quickly.
“With retrofit and insulation, I don’t think there is a settled technology platform yet,” Withey says. “So you have to pick which skills you’re going to try and teach.”
The tutor problem
Even where colleges do have the right kit, the right course and local demand, they often struggle to find people qualified to teach.
The government’s five new clean energy technical excellence colleges are all building on existing green energy provision, rather than creating new centres.
At one of them, City of Liverpool College, head of apprenticeships and workforce skills Robert Marshall-Slater told a conference that finding staff to deliver refrigeration, air conditioning and heat pump engineering had been “almost impossible”.
“I’ve got a live application out permanently on the website,” he said.
Warnes says few colleges employ dedicated full-time staff for heat pump or solar PV installation. Instead, many rely on associate lecturers who are still working in industry.
“We generally share the same people,” he says. “There are a few names out there that most colleges know, because they’re using them.”
That creates another problem: the people most needed to teach are also those most needed on the tools.
The Energy & Utility Skills Group, a partnership body representing the energy, water and waste industries, is urging the government to support it in retraining up to 7,000 smart meter installers to fit EV charge points, which its director of strategic engagement, Stephen Barrett, stresses would “expand workforce capacity without compromising safety or standards”.
But the ECA’s head of education and skills Keith Sanderson disagrees. “Civil servants and politicians want to believe it, because they know they’re in a hole and they’re looking for an easy way out,” says Sanderson.
For now, however, the sector is caught between urgency and uncertainty. The green transition needs skills. But if training is too fast, too shallow or too detached from occupational competence, it risks damaging public confidence in the very technologies ministers need households and employers to embrace.