Striking the Balance - Building a sustainable UK offshore energy workforce provides critical insights into the future of the UK’s offshore energy sector, offering a refreshed and timely update of RGU’s previous landmark workforce reports.
It captures the latest industry forecasts and employment data - highlighting the widening gap between policy intent and real-world outcomes. It also considers the evolving strategies of key European nations like Norway, Denmark, and the Netherlands, which continue to invest in domestic fossil fuel production, while accelerating low-carbon growth.
With UK offshore energy jobs still firmly in the political and media spotlight, underlined by recently announced redundancies at several operators and supply chain companies, the report outlines three offshore energy workforce scenarios (the low, mid, and high cases) and up to £350 billion of future investment in the UK’s offshore energy sector between 2025 and 2035. Each scenario scrutinizes the impact on UK offshore energy job numbers of several factors, including government policies, industry dynamics and investor sentiment.
The report suggests a 2030 UK offshore energy workforce requirement (oil, gas and renewables) of between 125,000 and 163,000 jobs, compared to today’s figure of approximately 154,000.
However, the specific UK oil and gas workforce is forecast to fall from 115,000 in 2024 to between 57,000 and 71,000 by the early 2030s.
In the lower case, the North Sea oil and gas workforce could shrink by approximately 400 jobs – the same number lost as a result of the closure of the Grangemouth refinery – every two weeks for the next five years.
Under a high-case scenario, workforce demand levels across the UK could hit over 210,000, but this will require the delivery of an additional 35 GW (or close to 6 GW per year) of offshore wind and sustaining UK oil and gas activities for an extended period, similar to policies applied in Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands.
With nearly 1 in 30 of Scotland’s working population currently employed in or supporting the offshore energy industry, compared to a UK-wide figure of approximately 1 in 220, the potential risks for Scotland’s supply chain and workforce are substantial.
If Scotland fails to capture the full range of offshore energy opportunities and the oil and gas decline continues to accelerate, the Scottish-based offshore energy workforce could decrease from approximately 75,000 in 2024 to between 45,000 and 63,000 by the early 2030s.
This newly released report underscores the urgency for action and cross-sector collaboration to protect jobs, sustain the world-class offshore energy supply chain, and accelerate the transition to a greener and cleaner future.
“The UK’s lack of joined up action means that the window of opportunity for delivering a just transition is closing,” said Professor Paul de Leeuw, Director of the Energy Transition Institute at Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen.
“With investment at risk and renewables projects facing delays, the findings underline the present-day situation for the UK offshore energy industry and its stakeholders. The big prize of a significant jobs gain is still within our collective reach. Inaction or simply slow progress will mean that UK offshore energy job numbers overall could drop by almost 20% to 125,000 by 2030, making the path towards net zero even harder to negotiate.
“The analysis shows that there is a workforce ‘goldilocks zone’ between 2025 and 2030 during which the UK supply chain capacity and capability can be sustained, developed and invested in, so that the transferability of the offshore energy workforce is optimized. However, key to the effective delivery of the goldilocks zone is rapid investment in UK capabilities to deliver a fast-growing program of green capital projects, which in turn will help to realize ambitious goals for domestic execution of these projects.”
Professor de Leeuw added, “The UK possesses all the attributes and resources to realize the ambitions set out in government strategies and forward-looking industry programs. The report shows that with the right interventions at the right time, the UK can achieve its strategic energy goals and reach its net zero objectives, all while protecting and significantly enhancing workforce numbers in the offshore energy sector.
“Countries such as Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands are already successfully balancing traditional energy production with rapid expansion of renewables, a model the UK could and should emulate.
“The review recognizes the constraints to accelerate the deployment of offshore wind, CCS, hydrogen and other renewable energies over the remainder of this decade. However, the analysis highlights that Governments can rapidly put in place policies to better manage the decline in the oil and gas sector, so that offshore energy jobs and the UK’s world-class supply chain can be sustained and retained.”
