Green economy at risk due to engineer shortage?

IEEE sounds the alarm, but the situation might be less bleak than it seems

According to Wanda Reder, president of the IEEE Power & Energy Society, the Green Economy development plan of US president Barack Obama will be impossible to effect due to a shortage of electrical engineers. In response to this, IEEE founded the U.S. Power and Energy Engineering Workforce Collaborative. This workgroup published its first report in April, drawing a very dark picture of the situation. Though the authors clearly have some good arguments, one must wonder if the situation is really as bad as they make it out. In the past, workforce shortages in certain professional domains have usually been solved automatically by the law of supply and demand.

Wanted: an army of electrical power engineers

According to the IEEE report, an estimated 45% of the engineers in U.S. electricity utilities will be eligible for retirement in the next five years. This means that about 7,000 power engineers will have to be replaced. Moreover, to fulfil the needs of the future economy, two to three times as many electric power engineers may be needed. And even if enough students choose to study electrical engineering — which is currently not the case — there might still be a problem, since that would create a shortage of university workforce to train all those aspiring engineers. The latter will certainly be the case if the university personnel should at the same time continue to execute sufficient research — also a necessity to make the green energy economy happen.

An action plan to turn the tide

The IEEE report proposes an Action Plan for the stakeholders —public authorities, private energy companies, and sector associations — to raise the number of electrical engineering trainees. This plan consists mainly of various kinds of financial and organisational support to schools and universities. Examples include additional scholarships, internships, teaching personnel, and research funding.

Is the green economy really at risk?

Similar action plans elaborated in countries world-wide to increase the number of students in certain professional domains, have often been overtaken by the events. The number of students does follow, at least partially, the law of supply and demand, and fluctuations often occur faster than government stimulation plans can be established.

That said, the need for electric power engineers today is not likely to be a short term phenomenon (hopefully not), given the enormous challenges we are facing. So the action plan proposed by IEEE is more than welcome. Does this mean that without such a plan, we are evolving into a dramatic shortage of qualified people? I don’t believe that is necessarily the case. Electrical engineers generally don’t like to hear it, but many of the functions they execute can easily be accomplished by other types of engineers, or even by any person with a university degree and a bit of technical feeling, provided of course, that they receive the required vocational training. Given the current economic crisis, the candidates will likely be many.