Energy, Digital and People Skills for Australia

Australia 4.0 - Energy & Digital Skills Roundtable

Greetings from the Engineers Australia HQ, where I am taking part in the Australia 4.0 - Energy & Digital Skills Roundtable. This is organised by the Pearcey Foundation to work out what skills will be needed for the transition to zero emissions economy, and how to get them. This is recognising that even if you have the technology, you need people who can build and repair it. This is not just people bolting stuff together, but also those programming the systems to run it, thus my interest*.

After a welcome from the acting EA President, we had some statistics of the supply of engineers. Highlights were that Australia is dependent on importing trained engineers and it will take 70 years at the current rate to achieve parity between male and females. This is much the same as the computing profession. There is an obvious way to increase the number of domestically trained engineers: attract more females, but that will require changes to training and jobs. That could also solve another problem with technical training: the need to teach people skills. At the ANU I help teach computer students to work in teams in the Techlauncher program.

It took 30 minutes before AI got a mention in the presentations. This was a relief as for the last few years AI seemed to be in the title of every talk. ;-) The approach taken here was AI enhancing work.

Some of the good news was that engineering skills are transferable. This suggests that engineers could move to renewable industry from others, such as mining. The bad news is the reverse is also the case, with the mining industry in particular having a demand for staff and money to attract them. Also there are about 40% of qualified engineers working outside an engineering role who might be attracted back. Engineers Australia produced a Clean energy workforce capacity study submission (May 2023).

The roundtable switched to comedy with discussion of smart toasters talking to smart fridges. This had a serious side as a way to manage energy use and also as a potential privacy risk. 

A topic I want to raise with the roundtable is the government's recent restrictions on international students: will this reduce the supply of engineers and computer professionals? What can we do to increase the domestic supply? Microcredentials were mentioned and I wonder if they will help people already qualified in engineering or computing to transition to renewable energy. Shortly after I typed the last few sentences the chair invited me to speak, so I said it.

The next speaker proposed an updated energy risk assessment. An example given was the vulnerability Australia has importing the components for building renewable energy systems. Also it was claimed that in a few years there will be no one in government qualified to conduct such a study.

* Way back in 2008, the Australian Computer Society commissioned me to write a course on Green Computing. The ACS and ANU first ran the course in 2009 and it is still offered by Athabasca University in Canada, 15 years later. The course is still on the books at ANU, perhaps it is time to revive it.