DUBAI, UAE – Players in the renewable energy sector of the Philippines are strategically seeking the help of the Danish government in helping address ‘tightness’ in the workforce for technical as well as managerial skills currently being experienced in the flourishing solar industry.

In an exclusive interview with Tetchi Cruz-Capellan, chairperson of the Philippine Solar and Storage Energy Alliance (PSSEA) on the sidelines of the COP28 Climate Change Summit, she sounded off that the solar industry has formally sought collaboration with Denmark Ambassador Franz-Michael Mellbin so the solar industry will be covered in the upskilling, reskilling and right-skilling of workers – a game-changing advocacy being advanced by the Danish government and other collaborators under the JOBS4RE initiative to reinforce Filipino talents for the targeted massive scale RE investments in the country.

“I told the Ambassador that what we would like to achieve is the same kind of manpower development that the Scandinavian countries had done for the maritime industry, because it's really them that developed the maritime labor of the Philippines - that’s why many of the Scandinavian countries have been employing Filipinos because they really invested in their capacity enhancement,” she stressed.

At COP 28, Capellan indicated that the common thread of discussions had been on funding for projects as well as increase in installations for RE capacities, “but there’s not much emphasis on the manpower that is needed to be able to make the ambitious targets a reality.”

She narrated “as an industry, in the Philipines alone, we’re already experiencing tightness in manpower supply – especially those on technical skills, primarily in installations.”

The PSSEA chair added “that’s why I forthrightly told the Ambassador: we want to collaborate with the Danish government - we need to develop new talents so that the ambitious RE development goals set by the Philippine government will be concretized – and that’s 19GW (gigawatts) by 2030; and 44GW by 2050.”

Right-skilling or capacity enhancement for solar workers, Capellan noted, will be highly critical because this particular segment of the RE industry accounts for bulk of the targeted clean energy installations in the country – not just for ground-mounted solar, but even for floating solar, then rooftop as well as the propounded energization of off-grid domains using solar systems.

She emphasized that the typical run-of-the-mill in the industry at present is that: the workers are just making their rounds in various companies to enhance their value (in salary terms), but there had been no new talents joining the pool.

The initial plan, according to the PSSEA chair, is to possibly draw up three-level curriculum: the first one will be for technical people in installations; the second level will be for design engineers; and the third level will be for management – including those on financial modeling and project management.

“We need to develop a program – a three-level curriculum; and we might also need to revive basic online training,” Capellan said; while specifying that one important requirement they must have in the human resource development ecosystem shall be a laboratory – in lieu of the makeshift ground and rooftop that had been traditionally used in the training of solar workers who joined the flock of talents during the feed-in-tariff (FIT) regime in the industry roughly 10 years ago.

“We need an institutional support to create that ecosystem – and we need a laboratory so we can do hands-on training; and the trainees shall be able to determine the condition of the land and how to efficiently install the solar panels,” she expounded.

In the case of fisherfolks who may be affected by floating solar installations, she reckoned that the kind of training that shall be institutionalized for them must lean on ‘transformative shift’ into the services sector – especially on the sphere of technical installations; and at the same time, they could still do fishing as added source of income.

Capellan highlighted another challenge that has to be factored in into the training program for solar industry workers will be in sustaining their employment in the domestic RE sector.

“Essentially, there are two challenges here: one is developing the talent for the local industry; and two, once their skills are already developed, how can we make them stay in the local RE industry? Because there’s huge demand for RE workers – even in developed countries that have high aspirations for solar,” she stated.