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Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. Johnty Dealey Williamson used

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Speaker 1: to work in food manufacturing for a company that makes

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Speaker 1: the flaky pastry that bakers use for croissants. But over

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Speaker 1: four years ago he got out of the food industry

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Speaker 1: and now he's helping make batteries.

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Speaker 2: The machinery is very similar, the process are very similar.

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Speaker 1: Jaunty is thirty three and lives in Birmingham, England, and

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Speaker 1: he says his job change wasn't that huge of a

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Speaker 1: pivot because croissant making and battery manufacturing actually have a

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Speaker 1: lot in common.

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Speaker 2: Instead of using flour, you are now looking at a

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Speaker 2: slightly more hazardous substance in slurry that isn't as easy

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Speaker 2: to gain that tacit knowledge.

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Speaker 1: To make a battery, engineers coat a metal plate with

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Speaker 1: a gloopy liquid that consists of chemicals like cobalts or lithium,

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Speaker 1: a slurry.

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Speaker 3: Quoted onto the surface, dried in an just like a

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Speaker 3: croissant would be baked in an oven, and then folded

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Speaker 3: into the form factor that you see.

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Speaker 1: That's Akshot Rothy, a senior climate reporter here at Bloomberg.

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Speaker 3: So you're going through a process of using something like

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Speaker 3: a dough that is then heated and cooked in an

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Speaker 3: oven and then packaged and sold to a customer just.

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Speaker 1: A lot less butter I guess. Oxshot says that in

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Speaker 1: Jaunty's role as head of learning and Development at the

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Speaker 1: UK Battery Industrialization Center, he's been trying to convince more

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Speaker 1: people that their skills and other jobs like making croissants

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Speaker 1: are actually really applicable to engineering gigs. Because as the

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Speaker 1: global demand for electricity rises an investment in electric energy

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Speaker 1: projects surpasses two trillion dollars, the world needs more workers

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Speaker 1: who can meet that demand, workers like the ones Jaunty

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Speaker 1: is training at the battery facility, but Oxshot says there

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Speaker 1: just aren't enough of them to pull it off.

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Speaker 3: Almost every source that we spoke to within the whole

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Speaker 3: ecosystem of electrification had some sort of problem with labor.

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Speaker 1: I'm Sarah Holder, and this is the big take from

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Speaker 1: Bloomberg News today on the show, how labor shortages in

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Speaker 1: the electrification industry are impacting everything from the green energy

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Speaker 1: transition to the AI revolution and what it would take

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Speaker 1: to turn things around. Data center builders in the US

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Speaker 1: are facing delays. German heat pump customers are waiting twice

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Speaker 1: as long as French customers for installations. UK utilities are

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Speaker 1: struggling to work through a backlog of solar panel customers.

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Speaker 1: These are just some of the growing pains of a

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Speaker 1: rapidly electrifying world, and they all have something in common.

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Speaker 1: A major global shortfall in labor problem in the US,

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Speaker 1: where over one hundred thousand new engineer roles created each

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Speaker 1: year go unfilled. In the UK, twenty percent of engineers

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Speaker 1: are expected to retire in the next five years, leaving

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Speaker 1: a million job openings. Japan is looking at a shortfall

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Speaker 1: of seven hundred thousand engineers by twenty thirty. Okshot Rothi,

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Speaker 1: who hosts the Zero podcast, has been looking into why

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Speaker 1: these issues are coming to a head now.

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Speaker 3: It's increase in the number of electric cars on the streets.

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Speaker 3: It's increased in the number of heat pumps being sold

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Speaker 3: instead of gas or oil furnaces, and it's an increase

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Speaker 3: in the number of data centers being built to power

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Speaker 3: artificial intelligence. The combination of these three things is leading

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Speaker 3: to a level of demand that none of these regions

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Speaker 3: have seen in three decades.

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Speaker 1: An Axshot says, there are any number of complications that

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Speaker 1: can slow down an electrification project beyond just labor.

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Speaker 3: Almost anywhere in Europe or America takes between five to

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Speaker 3: ten years just to be able to get the permission

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Speaker 3: to build this stuff. So that's number one. Number two

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Speaker 3: is that the business model of electricity is weird. It's

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Speaker 3: not like oil and gas, where you have a global

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Speaker 3: benchmark of some sort and people know when they can

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Speaker 3: hit profitability or not. Electricity prices vary from minute to minute,

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Speaker 3: from hour to hour, and the ability to be able

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Speaker 3: to make money on that electricity isn't always guaranteed. Then

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Speaker 3: there's a whole host of things that are starting to

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Speaker 3: become pretty alarming. There's an extreme shortage of transformers, there's

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Speaker 3: an extreme shortage of electrical cables.

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Speaker 1: But it's hard to talk about any of these problems

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Speaker 1: without coming back to people.

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Speaker 3: The people who will be needed to build this stuff,

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Speaker 3: all the way from construction activity to having engineers that

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Speaker 3: have PhDs that design this infrastructure.

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Speaker 1: While surging demand for electricity project might sound like a

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Speaker 1: dream for a company in the field, the demand supply

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Speaker 1: gap is so severe it's actually posing an existential threat.

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Speaker 1: One example Oxshot told me about is the Swedish battery

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Speaker 1: company Northvolt.

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Speaker 3: North Volt was the bet that Europe was making for

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Speaker 3: a battery giant. Domestically, a company raised thirteen billion dollars,

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Speaker 3: It was set to IPO in twenty twenty three at

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Speaker 3: a valuation of twenty billion dollars, and then it filed

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Speaker 3: for bankruptcy. Now, any bankruptcy usually is triggered where you

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Speaker 3: don't have enough money, but if you take a few

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Speaker 3: steps back, it really started from its difficulty to find

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Speaker 3: enough workers in the north of Sweden to fill up

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Speaker 3: the positions it needed to have a battery manufacturing facility.

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Speaker 3: A lot of the equipment for that plant was coming

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Speaker 3: from China and from South Korea. These are really complicated

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Speaker 3: machines that require people who know how to operate those machines.

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Speaker 3: They could find some people, but not enough, and because

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Speaker 3: there's a demand for batteries that was growing, investors were

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Speaker 3: keen that north would start to make plans for new plants,

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Speaker 3: and in doing so it really stretched itself and thus

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Speaker 3: there were cancelations of orders with billions of dollars, and

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Speaker 3: then it couldn't pay back its debt hoolders and e

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Speaker 3: menually had to file for bankruptcy. The company declined to

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Speaker 3: comment on our story, but we did have former employees

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Speaker 3: who were involved in trying to hire people who said

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Speaker 3: that this was certainly one issue that contributed to the problem.

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Speaker 1: If you don't have the people, you can't make the

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Speaker 1: thing to sell. Yeah, let's talk about that people problem,

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Speaker 1: that labor issue. What kinds of jobs are we talking

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Speaker 1: about here and why are they so hard to fill.

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Speaker 3: So in the UK, we spoke to a utility that

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Speaker 3: builds heat pumps and solar panels and they just don't

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Speaker 3: have the number of people to install that device. So

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Speaker 3: it doesn't have to be somebody who's highly skilled who's

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Speaker 3: gone to university with an engineering degree. It's just somebody

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Speaker 3: who's able to handle mechanical things, do things like plumbing,

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Speaker 3: do things like going up to a roof in a

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Speaker 3: safe manner. When we spoke to data center developers in

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Speaker 3: the US, they were missing construction workers, people who would

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Speaker 3: lay down the foundations that would make the floor of

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Speaker 3: a data center, people who would go out and build

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Speaker 3: overhead lines that would bring power and huge amounts of

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Speaker 3: power these days for data centers into the data center.

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Speaker 3: So a lot of the engineering prowess in Western economies

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Speaker 3: in the past decade or two decades have gone to

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Speaker 3: the tech industry because that's where you have a sexy

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Speaker 3: companies but also higher pay, and so they're having to

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Speaker 3: go out and figure out how can we meet the

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Speaker 3: salary of a tech engineer so that we can bring

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Speaker 3: them in house and do our work instead. But when

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Speaker 3: it comes to engineers with skills on the grid, you

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Speaker 3: just require a level of study and experience to be

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Speaker 3: able to manage something that is so finely tuned and

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Speaker 3: has such complexity in it. So it really is a

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Speaker 3: big challenge for the employer to figure out what type

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Speaker 3: of skill do you train for, what type of skill

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Speaker 3: do you go and hire for, and perhaps what type

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Speaker 3: of skill could you poach from another industry by paying

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Speaker 3: somebody a little more money?

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Speaker 1: And across the board, labor shortage is the problem. So

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Speaker 1: what's the solution that's after the break? Industrialized countries like Japan,

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Speaker 1: the US, and Germany are struggling to find workers you

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Speaker 1: can do the labor needed to electrify their economies and

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Speaker 1: meet energy demand. But there is an outlier. One country

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Speaker 1: that appears to be bucking this trend entirely is China.

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Speaker 1: What's happening there.

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Speaker 3: So China until recently has had a growing population. That

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Speaker 3: population has been heavily incentivized to go in the sciences

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Speaker 3: and engineering because the country was growing, Its manufacturing sector

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Speaker 3: was growing, its construction sector was growing, its tech sector

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Speaker 3: was growing, and all that growth meant lots and lots

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Speaker 3: of people were getting the degrees that would provide the

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Speaker 3: skills for these industry. Specifically, right now in China, there's

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Speaker 3: actually been cuts in the tech industry, so many of

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Speaker 3: the software engineers are now looking for jobs in perhaps

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Speaker 3: safer industries like the grid industry. State Grid is one

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Speaker 3: of the biggest employers and it provides a comfortable job

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Speaker 3: as a state owned company, and it saw last year

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Speaker 3: four hundred thousand applicants for twenty six thousand jobs. So

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Speaker 3: it's a place that does not see any shortage of people,

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Speaker 3: and of course there's no shortage of either goods or technology,

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Speaker 3: and that's one reason why China is electrifying faster than

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Speaker 3: any large economy in the world right now.

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Speaker 1: What can other countries learn from china strategy.

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Speaker 3: That you need to have a whole supply chain of workers,

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Speaker 3: technology and manufacturing and the right policies to be able

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Speaker 3: to build the whole electrification industry. You can't just focus

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Speaker 3: on solving one part of the ecosystem, because without the other,

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Speaker 3: the whole system doesn't work.

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Speaker 1: For countries that don't yet have that supply chain of

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Speaker 1: workers at home, hiring people with the right skills from

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Speaker 1: abroad is one option, but the US and many countries

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Speaker 1: in Europe are leaning into stricter immigration policies, making recruiting

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Speaker 1: overseas harder.

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Speaker 3: When we talk to companies, there's a reluctance to talk

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Speaker 3: about immigration policies just because of the toxic politics around

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Speaker 3: immigration right now. Nobody wants to be in the news

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Speaker 3: and be in the ire of, say the US President

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Speaker 3: about hiring more immigrants. But that is one thing that

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Speaker 3: we know has been used by industries in the past.

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Speaker 3: For example, the tech industry, even in Donald Trump's first term,

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Speaker 3: argued for more h men b visas to bring in

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Speaker 3: more engineers into the country. And perhaps if this problem

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Speaker 3: keeps getting more severe, we might see a change in

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Speaker 3: the wind. But right now it's not like industry is

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Speaker 3: talking shop on immigration.

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Speaker 1: Immigration restrictions have put more pressure on companies and education

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Speaker 1: programs to build out the pipeline of workers themselves, and

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Speaker 1: Auxtad says there are a few ways to do that.

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Speaker 3: So you could start with looking at what's the quickest solution,

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Speaker 3: and that often tends to be trying to poach people

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Speaker 3: from another industry. So we heard from people who used

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Speaker 3: to work in the food industry.

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Speaker 1: He's talking about John D. Daley Williamson, who he heard

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Speaker 1: from earlier.

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Speaker 2: It's not too dissimilar to norm manufacturing, just a few

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Speaker 2: little tweaks that we need to give some knowledge to

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Speaker 2: people of.

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Speaker 3: If you can't poach, then you start to train people

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Speaker 3: from scratch, where they're given training to install a heat

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Speaker 3: pump in the house, install a radiator for the heating,

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Speaker 3: go up on a roof, and employ a solar panel,

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Speaker 3: and they work with experienced workers alongside so that they

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Speaker 3: gain the skills to be able to do that themselves

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Speaker 3: after the two years of training is done.

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Speaker 1: But especially in aging economies like Japan and Germany and

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Speaker 1: the US where many people are on the brink of retiring,

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Speaker 1: some experts argue that the training process has to start

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Speaker 1: even earlier.

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Speaker 3: Then you can go a step further down the chain

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Speaker 3: where you go to universities or even schools to try

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Speaker 3: and to impart the importance of education in the science

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Speaker 3: is in engineering because there are all these job opportunities

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Speaker 3: available to them, because they are contributing to trying to

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Speaker 3: solve a problem like climate change or trying to help

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Speaker 3: their country grow economically at a time of need.

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Speaker 1: That kind of messaging is part of a larger strategy

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Speaker 1: to sell people on these kinds of jobs, and John

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Speaker 1: d who's training the next generation of battery makers, is

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Speaker 1: on the front lines of that message.

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Speaker 3: Johnty talked about how many times he heard that when

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Speaker 3: the job of an engineer was mentioned, it was seen

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Speaker 3: as a job that is dirty in the sense that

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Speaker 3: you have to get oil on your hands and you

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Speaker 3: are working in a space that would have filed around you.

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Speaker 3: But he had to tell them, look, battery factories have

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Speaker 3: some of the cleanest rooms in the world. In fact,

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Speaker 3: some of the clean rooms are cleaner than hospital operating theaters.

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Speaker 3: In other cases, we found, for example, in Gievarova, which

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Speaker 3: makes trunmers, the company used to advertise for jobs that

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Speaker 3: had the word heavy engineer in it. And the word

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Speaker 3: heavy engineer was because they played around and moved things

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Speaker 3: that were heavy, except you didn't have to lift it.

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Speaker 3: There were machines that lifted it for you, but just

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Speaker 3: removing the word heavy saw them have more applications from women.

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Speaker 3: So there are these small perception issues that do matter.

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Speaker 3: But these are small tweaks that perhaps contribute towards solving

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Speaker 3: a very big problem.

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Speaker 1: But Oxshad says, those perception shifts won't happen overnight.

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Speaker 3: It's going to take a while for this signal that

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Speaker 3: there is a huge demand for people in this industry

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Speaker 3: to trickle down to the level where students in schools

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Speaker 3: are thinking their future lies in electrifying the economy rather

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Speaker 3: than sitting in front of computers and writing code.

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Speaker 1: Akshat, thank you so much for coming on the show.

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Speaker 3: Thank you for having me.

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Speaker 1: This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder.

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