Spinning Reserve and Energy &Utility Skills, harnessing talent and skills in the energy and utilities sector into low carbon start ups
Spinning Reserve is a not-for-profit initiative to retain talent and skills in the energy and utilities sector at a time when COVID-19 is putting thousands at risk of redundancy. Only last month, the Energy & Utilities Skills Partnership launched its Workforce Renewal and Skills Strategy, announcing a gap of 277,000 skilled workers required over the next decade and welcomes this move to get talent into small businesses and low carbon start-ups.
Background to Spinning Reserve
Spinning Reserve is the term for power stations that are on-line and have capacity to generate more output when called upon. Like power stations with extra capacity, there are nowthousands of energy workers on furlough or unemployedwhoare ready and able to generate more ideas. Through Spinning Reserve (a social not-for-profit business), the talent of unemployed or furloughed energy sectorworkers is being harnessed to take lowcarbon innovation and business ideas off the drawing board and into reality. It’s the start-up incubator for the energy and lowcarbon sectors that everyone can join. Spinning Reserve was founded by Rosa Stewart whose experience spans across the energy sector, including having led development of clean growth policy at
BEIS.The Spinning Reserve Project is run by 10 volunteers with a range of energy and sustainability backgrounds, many ofwhomare unemployed themselves.
Getting involved
The initial aim of the project is to link individuals with ideas, time and skills to existing energy and lowcarbon start-ups and small businesses. The next phase of the project will set up a platform and an incubator for unemployedworkers to create - and source funding for - their own projects. Over 30 start-ups and small businesses have signed up and are actively seeking people with ideas and skills across a wide range of functions, including business case development, market testing, branding and marketing, product design, software and technology development, engineering, regulation, communications andmany others. Individualswhoare currently on furlough or unemployed can sign-up. Start-ups and small businesseswhowould like to seek support from talented individuals can sign up. Founder of the Spinning Reserve Project: Rosa Stewart, stated: “Thousands ofworkers fromour sector are losing their jobs as a result
ofCOVID-19.The challenge of reaching net zero meanswe can’t afford
Spinning Reserve’s Rosa Stewart and Jan Ward CBE, Chair of Energy&Utilities Skills
to lose this talent but need to look at howto reskill and transition them intonewventures in growth
areas.The more people and businesses whoget involved, the more projects and start-ups will spring out of Spinning Reserve, and the easier it will becometo build a lowcarbon economy, tackle climate change, and alleviate social problems caused by energy sector furloughs and unemployment.” JanWard CBE, Chair of Energy&Utility Skills, commented: “Through the Energy&Utilities Skills Partnership, theUKutility sector has just released itsworkforce renewal&skills strategy, setting out for the next five years its need for tens of thousands of skilled people, and emphasising the pivotal role it will play in delivering our nations net zero
ambitions.COVID-19 has further helped to showthe critical role they perform for keeping society running. One key part of thatnewworkforce strategy is the retention of skilled labour within the sector wherever possible and identifying where existing skills gaps can be addressed through retraining or reskilling those becoming available to the labour
market.The Spinning Reserve initiative is highly complementary to this aim, directly targeting unemployed or furloughed energy sectorworkers and acting to get their skills quickly deployed into roles that can bring immediate societal and personal value.We are very pleased to beworking with Rosa and her team, and I praise their effort and innovation in seeking to help others.”
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