WeeklySA_AdminWork: The education sector needs to work closely with the industry for joint skills planning
By Isaac Moledi
The Chemical Industries Education and Training Authority (CHIETA) has prioritized digital literacy skills in South Africa by initiating Smart Skills Centres to be launched across the country to close the hydrogen skills gap.
CHIETA Smart Skills Centres aim to provide free digital literacy skills programmes including experiential learning using virtual reality technology for certain occupations. This first-of-its-kind Smart centre was launched n Saldanha Bay in the Western Cape. The centre has been opened to the public since the beginning of February this year.
Eight new centres are planned over the next two years. CHIETA CEO, Yershen Pillay, says South Africa needs to prioritize digital literacy skills programmes because the lack of skills development and training is the biggest challenge to growing South Africa’s hydrogen economy. It is not just accessibility to hydrogen training that poses a challenge, but actually receiving the education and skills to meet industry needs.
Pillay says since digital skills are the foundation for hydrogen skills, a coherent digital literacy skills curriculum is required for hydrogen education.
However, the lack of skills development and training is the biggest challenge to growing South Africa’s hydrogen economy. According to Pillay, it is not just accessibility to hydrogen training that poses a challenge, but actually receiving the education and skills to meet industry needs.
His company’s research has identified 17 specific training and skills requirements where about 14 000 jobs are likely to be created including hydrogen systems engineers, technicians, gas fitters, and other associated trades and services.
“The technical and regulatory uncertainties in South Africa provide a major challenge for effective skills planning. For this reason, leadership needs to be provided for enabling policy and regulatory changes,” says Pillay.
The education sector needs to work more closely with industry for joint skills planning and the co-creation of future training courses and learning materials. “What is needed is more cross-sector collaboration and research development by engaging with industries such as transport, mining, manufacturing, energy, infrastructure, and agriculture,” Pillay says.
South Africa lacks the cross-sector collaboration to support skills development and training on green hydrogen. “Crosssector collaboration and joint skills planning between government, the private sector and training authorities should be an apex priority for a hydrogen-ready workforce. Without cross-sector collaboration, a fragmented and piecemeal training landscape may evolve in which hydrogen training is expensive, exclusive and inaccessible to all.”
The biggest risk facing South Africa, according to Pillay, is the inability to seize the moment and implement green hydrogen at scale because of the lack of adequate skills and appropriate expertise.
To mitigate this risk and close the hydrogen skills gap in South Africa requires a multipronged strategy that includes better coordination from government, cross-sector collaboration with industry, digital literacy programmes and specialised training on electrolysers, fuel cells and hydrogen systems.
Pillay says for South Africa to sign the Paris Agreement on Climate Change in 2016 meant that the country was committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and collaborating with the global community to reduce global temperatures to below two degrees Celsius. But the problem that the country faces is how best to accelerate the reduction of carbon emissions to meet its commitments to the Paris Agreement.
“One way of accelerating the reduction of carbon emissions is the use of green hydrogen as a zero-emissions energy carrier,” Pillay says.
According to him, in 2021, the International Energy Agency (IEA) declared that hydrogen would be an essential source of energy for reducing carbon emissions. According to a recent report by the Hydrogen Council in collaboration with McKinsey & Company, 40 countries have developed national hydrogen strategies to tap into hydrogen’s potential to decarbonize and the industry has announced 680 hydrogen projects proposals as at the end of May 2022.
“The main barriers to closing the hydrogen skills gap in South Africa are a lack of expertise, funding and a lack of training facilities and equipment such as electrolyser simulators. For this reason, more needs to be done to develop South Africa’s education infrastructure and physical infrastructure to support both current and future demand.
If we are unable to develop this infrastructure in the next five years, we may miss the opportunity to be a leader in this rapidly growing industry. We need to plan now for the future growth and expansion of hydrogen energy,” Pillay says.
Published on the 95th Edition
