Skills for Success: Shaping the future of skills for the clean energy sector

Efficiency for Access, represented by CLASP’s Abigail Kuria, attended the WorldSkills Conference in Shanghai, China from 23 to 25 September. The WorldSkills Conference offered an opportunity for leaders, experts, and young people to come together to shape the future of skills, uniting diverse voices to accelerate innovation, equity, and excellence in skills development worldwide. This was not only a gathering, but a call to action, empowering policymakers, industry, development partners, and educators to share best practices and deliver skills solutions in a rapidly changing world, helping to shape the United Nations post-2030 agenda.

Kuria participated in the inaugural Skills CoLab, a new initiative launched at WorldSkills Conference 2026 to foster international cooperation and knowledge sharing in Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET). The Skills CoLab provided an interactive marketplace where selected initiatives shared their work through focused 30-minute consultations with potential partners, funders, collaborators, and peers interested in learning from their experience.

Across the sessions, several recurring themes emerged, emphasising the importance of aligning skills systems with changing labour market demands, particularly in sectors undergoing rapid technological and green transitions.

Here are a few key takeaways:

Industry engagement is essential to keeping training relevant. Successful skills systems are built around close collaboration between training institutions and employers. Industry has an important role in identifying emerging skills needs, shaping curricula, supporting practical learning, and creating clearer pathways into employment.

Workforce programmes need to move from pilots to systems. Scaling requires more than replicating individual training projects. It depends on institutional structures, government support, sustainable financing and long-term partnerships that embed successful approaches within national skills systems.

Green-transition skills should be treated as a core workforce priority. As clean-energy technologies and productive-use markets grow, skills systems will need to evolve alongside them so workers can install, operate, maintain and service emerging technologies.

Inclusion needs to be built into programme design. Access to skills remains uneven, particularly for people in rural areas, women, people with disabilities and others facing systemic barriers. Programmes therefore need to address the practical barriers that prevent participation and completion, not simply provide equal access to training places.

Young people should help shape the skills systems designed for them. Youth agency was highlighted as important to sustainable skills systems. Young people can provide valuable insight into the barriers they face and the support needed to move successfully from training into employment.

Skills portability and recognition will become increasingly important. Common occupational standards and recognized qualifications can help make skills transferable across institutions, employers and borders, strengthening long-term employment prospects as programmes scale.

Digital technologies can expand training, but workforce readiness matters. AI, automation and machine learning are creating new opportunities for skills delivery, while also increasing the need for workers to develop the digital capabilities required to use these tools effectively.

Investment in training quality matters as much as access. High-quality practical training depends on capable instructors, appropriate equipment, and exposure to emerging technologies. Investment in recruitment should therefore be matched by investment in the infrastructure and trainer capacity needed to deliver relevant skills.

These lessons point to the need and opportunity to strengthen the capacity of training institutions and skills systems to respond to the technical workforce requirements of growing clean energy markets. This means moving beyond individual training cohorts toward a systems-change approach that builds lasting institutional capability, supports employment and income generation, and strengthens the workforce needed for clean-energy markets to scale. Efficiency for Access has a significant role to play as a convener. Efficiency for Access can bring together employers, TVET institutions, government, and development partners to identify skills gaps in the clean energy sector, test industry-aligned training models, and generate evidence that supports wider adoption.

As the future of what work looks like changes in the coming years and decades, Efficiency for Access is committed to equipping young people with the skills they need to build a greener, more sustainable, and more equitable world. Advancing Efficiency for Access’ broader mission of expanding access to clean energy requires reinforcing the value of workforce development. Expanding access to energy can only happen through the people who work to make it happen.

“Where a young person lives should not limit what skills they can learn or their opportunity to excel: This was a resounding message from the Worldskills Conference that will stay will me,” reflects Kuria on the experience.

“Everyone should have the opportunity to develop the skills they need to succeed. This is especially relevant to our workforce development work in the clean energy sector in sub-Saharan Africa as many young people, particularly in rural areas, still face barriers to accessing quality technical training, industry exposure and pathways into employment. I’m leaving the conference inspired and even more committed to the great work that CLASP under the Efficiency for Access program is doing to enable young people, regardless of where they live, to participate in and benefit from the opportunities created by the clean energy sector.”