The technology boom and a looming shortage of trained workers in the next five to ten years have set the stage for an aggressive electricity sector renewal project.
“Our success will very much be determined by our efforts to ensure our next generation is trained and equipped to drive our energy system forward,” said the Honourable Brad Duguid, Ontario Minister of Energy, in his keynote remarks at Ontario’s Electricity Future: New Skills for New Jobs. The half-day symposium, presented by the newly formed Power Engineering Education Consortium (PEEC), was held in Toronto on March 10.
The province’s energy future will remain bright, Minister Duguid indicated, thanks to the combined efforts of post-secondary institutions, industry, labour and government who are partnering in PEEC to address Ontario’s critical shortage of qualified personnel in the electricity sector.
As baby boomers retire, and Ontario approaches its target of creating 50,000 clean energy jobs by the end of 2012, Ontario will need a new and young workforce to fill these roles, the minister commented.
“We need to make sure that Ontario will be ready to meet this challenge and it starts with education and training [and] to ensure that programs are readily available to provide incentives, opportunities, the right learning environments and clear career paths for our youth.”
The PEEC partnership was founded by seven Ontario universities and eight representative groups from industry and labour. Chaired by Dr. Richard Marceau, Provost, University of Ontario Institute of Technology in Oshawa, the symposium outlined a number of strategies that would see post-secondary institutions play a leading role in encouraging more young people to pursue careers in the electricity sector.
The symposium’s first panel, chaired by Amir Shalaby, Vice-President of the Ontario Power Authority, presented the main drivers for human capital: demographics of the current workforce, including a large number of retirees within the next five years; refurbishment and modernization of infrastructure; and the growth of outsourced services and consultants.
Also, “It’s global now,” said Dr. Marceau of today’s labour force, which can migrate anywhere in the world. “We need to deal with the requirement of keeping human capital here.”
PEEC aims to graduate 1,130 students in Ontario over the next five years, with an estimated investment of $12,600 per electric-power engineering graduate, for a total of $14.2 million.
“The time is now upon us to expand to the university-level the initiatives that colleges and government have undertaken to address the needs of the electricity sector for high-school and college graduates,” said Professor Cristina Amon, Dean of U of T’s Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering and chair of the symposium’s second panel, on education, which heard from representatives of post-secondary institutions and provincial government ministries.
“PEEC’s goal is to deliver a high-quality program in electric-power engineering, leveraging the resources of seven Ontario universities, to fill in the gap [between supply and demand for electrical engineers] within five years.”
The Power Engineering Education Consortium is comprised of seven universities: McMaster University, Queen’s University, Ryerson University, University of Ontario Institute of Technology, University of Toronto, University of Waterloo, and University of Western Ontario. PEEC is supported by eight industry and labour partners: Canadian District Energy Association, CANDU Owners’ Group, Electricity Distributors’ Association, Hydro One Networks, Ontario Power Authority, Ontario Power Generation, Power Workers’ Union, and the Society of Energy Professionals
