It has been predicted that Britain’s economic decline can be reversed in part by thousands of jobs created by the growth in renewable technologies. However, experts are now warning that this will not happen unless there is a huge investment in training.

Gordon Brown recently stated that he expected over 400,000 green jobs to be created in the UK over the next five years. However, the Institute for Public Policy Research has suggested that the technical and management skills required to do these jobs does not exist. Therefore a great deal of technical and management training will have to be undertaken very soon in order that it can feed through. The Institute estimates it will take about eight years to properly train enough people and ensure that the UK workforce is sufficiently and correctly skilled.

A new report by the institute shows that only seven hundred people have jobs relating to offshore wind turbines. Furthermore, there is only one factory in the UK which produces parts for wind turbines. This despite the fact that Britain is thought to have the world’s greatest potential for producing energy from offshore wind farms.

The situation has not been helped by Shell and BP who have both cut back on their investment in renewable energy.