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Canadian clean power labour shortages looming
August 03, 2010
Financial Post, July 27
A shortage of skilled workers could stall Canada’s push to develop sources of clean energy — delaying construction schedules, boosting development costs and squeezing profit margins in coming years.
Educators, industry players and analysts see a widening gap between the demand and supply of trained staff for the thousands of green-power projects expected to start operations between 2011 and 2013.
Ontario, with its lucrative, long-term clean-energy contracts, is most vulnerable. Some 50,000 clean-energy jobs are expected to be created in the province in the next three years. The jobs range from construction workers building wind and solar farms to electrical engineers, factory machinists and information technology specialists.
Compounding the problem, scores of Canadian power workers will retire soon, while a slew of new specialized college programs will take several years to churn out green graduates.
Read the whole article at the Financial Post
