Staff shortages too widespread to achieve 2050 climate-neutral goal: EIB

The Netherlands simply does not have enough workers to transition its built environment off the gas network before 2025. It will, therefore, probably be impossible to achieve the goal of a climate-neutral Netherlands by that year, the Economic Institute for Construction (EIB) said.

To achieve a climate-neutral built environment, 7 million homes and 480 million square meters of other buildings need to be switched off natural gas. That gigantic task will cost an estimated 375 billion euros in investments, 225 billion euros of which will likely be unprofitable. The Netherlands can afford it financially, but not with the current workforce, the EIB said.

There are currently almost 60,000 full-time workers involved in making homes more sustainable. To achieve the climate-neutral by 2050 goal, that will have to quickly increase to over 150,000. The EIB does not see that happening. The intake for technical courses is decreasing slightly, and foreign workers with the required knowledge are hard to come by because they are also in very high demand in other European countries working on the energy transition.

The Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL) recently called the goal of being climate neutral by 2050 “feasible.” But according to the EIB, the PBL only looked at the technological and geophysical feasibility, and did not consider whether it was also economically and socially feasible.

According to the EIB, the 2050 deadline is probably not going to happen. “If the horizon can be extended to 2060 or a few years earlier, a much more realistic path for the required labor capacity will emerge.”

It added that the Netherlands must also consider what to do with all the recruited energy transition workers once the climate-neutral goal is achieved. “It leaves a replacement and maintenance market with an associated labor capacity of approximately 50,000 full-time jobs,” the EIB said. “So in 2051, 100,000 workers would become redundant.”