Dr. David Connolly:

The opportunity to reskill is enormous. Right now, as painful as it is say, we are continuing to expand our gas network, continuing to put gas and oil burners into people’s homes and, in many cases, it can be challenging to say, “Stop doing that, instead we want to do something different”. In regard to the people putting pipes into the streets, 90% of those skills should be transferable to putting district heating pipes in the streets. The only unique skill set that cannot be translated over is the welder of the pipes for the district heating network. To put this in context, the training course to upskill a welder for district heating pipes is in the ballpark of two to three weeks. We are not asking people to take on a six-year course. If that is the most specialised skill that needs to be transferred, it should be transferable. With regard to the people or plumbers installing boilers, they should be familiar with what a heat exchanger is, how to plumb it together and connect the pipework. It is not at all the leap that might be the case with a heat pump, for example, where there is a good deal more complexity to the installation. That would require some upskilling. However, it involves minor jumps in existing skills rather than learning completely new skills. The last thing we want is that people will be unemployed out of the transition. However, there is a huge possibility here because district heating will experience the same issue as the rest of the economy. We will be tight on tradespeople and labour. If it was a case of being able to redirect labour from fossil fuel boiler installations to district heating and heat exchanger installations, it would be an ideal way to transition across.