SPECIAL FOCUS
This development comes hot on the heels of the news that a new degree apprenticeship for building services engineering has been approved by the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (IFATE) and is now awaiting formal approval by the Secretary of State for Education. The apprenticeship is expected to launch in March 2025 and each one will receive funding of up to £27,000. “We are pleased that the Chancellor
has recognised the crucial role played by apprenticeships in addressing some of the key skills gaps in our economy,” said BESA’s training and skills director Helen Yeulet.
“Delivering long-term decarbonisation and
green energy plans depends on having a new generation of well-trained and motivated engineers, and there would be little point in stimulating investment without the workforce to back it up.”
BESA said the Chancellor’s support sent an important signal to employers because apprenticeships were the best way to equip industry with the modern skills it needed to be “fi t for the future”.
The building engineering sector has a rapidly ageing workforce with a high proportion of employees already over 60 and nearing
retirement plus a sharp drop in the number of workers under 30. This makes it hard to meet growing demand in areas such as indoor air quality, decarbonisation of heating, and renewables. However, recent research by the Energy Systems Catapult revealed that just 2% of the people employed in the heating industry were female and only 5% from a BAME background. BESA said this was an example of a wider failure to recruit a properly diverse workforce with the skills needed to decarbonise buildings and meet government net zero targets. “We urgently need to replace lost skills and start to rebuild the thinning ranks of the youngest and brightest in our industry,” said Yeulet. “Our industry is currently not recruiting from a wide enough demographic and its lack of diversity leaves it woefully short of skills. It also means we are missing out on the diversity of thought and ideas that allow us to approach engineering challenges in new ways. This is particularly crucial as we adopt more emerging technologies and processes to address climate change and make buildings safer and healthier.” BESA’s ‘Future Skills’ pledge helps with the provision of apprenticeships by ensuring that
REFRIGERANTS
colleges have a known number of employers committed to developing a pipeline of learners and building up a workforce equipped to face future challenges.
NEWS
Cooling must be considered critical infrastructure, says new report
E
xperts from the University of Birmingham are calling for the global cooling and cold chain to be considered as critical infrastructure as the planet continues to heat. The report, The Hot Reality: Living in a +50°C World, comes as world leaders, businesses, scientists, and environmental agencies gather in Dubai for the start of COP 28. The Hot Reality: Living in a +50°C World project
is led by the Centre for Sustainable Cooling and the Africa Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Cooling and Cold-Chain (ACES) in Kigali, Rwanda. The report outlines the need to formally designate cooling infrastructure systems as critical infrastructure, central to our climate adaptation strategy for a fast- warming world. It describes the benefi ts this would bring and proposes important next steps that must now be taken towards this vital goal.
The challenge is that cooling already accounts for
more than 7% of all GHG emissions. It is estimated that these emissions could double by 2030. Moreover, hydrofl uorocarbons (HFCs) are the fastest-growing source of GHG emissions in the world because of the increasing global demand for space cooling and refrigeration. The report sets out fi ve main recommendations to
improve adaptability to our rapidly heating planet. National governments and international
governance bodies worldwide should recognise that cooling is a critical service and designate the infrastructure which delivers it as critical infrastructure. National governments should develop integrated,
future-proofed strategies for adaptation to climate change-induced heat impacts with the provision
of sustainable cooling infrastructure at their core, including policies based on a comprehensive assessment of the food, health, digital industrial and economic security implications of sustainable cooling for their citizens. Governments, infrastructure designers, developers and operators, and academia should take a holistic, whole systems thinking approach to planning, building, operating, maintaining, adapting, and decommissioning cooling infrastructure. Governments, academia, infrastructure designers and civil society should recognise that the majority of the energy services required to support a modern society are thermal and adopt a thermal thinking approach to energy system policymaking, research, and design.
www.sustainablecooling.org/resources/
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www.acr-news.com • December 2023 13
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