This article was first published as part of a social media campaign on mallowstreet – an online community for pension funds. The author was undertaking a placement year in the Sizewell C Financing and Economic Regulation team at the time.
On 30th September 2019, Cottam Power Station being powered down after almost 50 years of generation. This coal power station has been a key part of both the national and local economy; at its peak, it provided jobs for 750 people and generated enough electricity to power roughly 3.7 million UK homes.
In line with the recent legislation for the UK to reach Net Zero by 2050, the need to transition from coal is becoming ever more pressing. This represents a real challenge for society: how do we ensure that people are not lost along the way as we move from fossil fuel intensive industries?
In order to make the transition from coal power generation – and other high carbon industries – successful in every sense, we need to ensure that we are bringing people with us: part of this will mean facilitating an easy move into Green Jobs. This process has been described as a Just Transition.
Enabling a Just Transition, however, is not simply a matter of moving workers into new jobs; it is about empowering workers to move forward in a dignified way towards alternative employment. This process of empowerment can take many different forms: it can involve anything from aiding in the development of new skills to the provision of support to help workers cope with the potential turbulence that any work move can cause.
In line with this aspiration, the team at Cottam Power Station set-up a ‘People Hub’ to help their workers explore opportunities within EDF. Further, a variety of workshops were established to cover topics ranging from CV writing/interview techniques to health and wellbeing resilience to inclusive leadership behaviours.
Via this process, a significant level of retention of employees has been achieved; this includes all apprentices, that were based at Cottam, staying on with EDF to continue their training.
Many of the employees at Cottam have found high quality Green Jobs within the nuclear industry – 21 in total.
John Wilkinson recently spoke about his experiences of moving from Cottam power station. John had worked at Cottam for nearly 20 years as a feed systems engineer. Upon hearing about the planned closure at Cottam, John had to begin thinking about which direction his career could take. For a while, John had been thinking about the possibility of a move to nuclear – he believed it represented an industry with long-term career prospects and the opportunity for skills development. In order to achieve this goal, John sought out his own information about the nuclear industry and proactively found opportunities within the sector.
John now works at HPC as an operational development engineer and has been involved in pre-operation and pre-systems management. He has found the team at HPC to be very supportive with them giving him the time and space needed to ensure that his transition was a success.
Nuclear generation represents an industry with very high labour productivity, as such it is an ideal industry into which ex-fossil fuel industry workers can move. Moreover, there is a clear pipeline being developed by EDF Energy to smooth the transition from coal to nuclear. This pipeline was put into action at Cottam with the Nuclear Development Pipeline Development Centre being established – this centre looked to make career paths visible, to give nuclear generation training to Cottam’s employees, and to help create individual development plans for those employees that were opting to make the move to nuclear generation.
Nuclear, as a low carbon source of power, represents a real enabler of the Just Transiton through the establishment of high skilled Green Jobs. As such, we need to ensure that there are jobs in the nuclear industry for people to move into.
One way of doing this, would be to progress with nuclear new build project like the one at Hinkley Point. The next proposed nuclear project is Sizewell C. The Sizewell C team is working on a proposed new nuclear project in Suffolk, which is an exciting opportunity to develop an energy hub and different low carbon technologies. A regulated asset base financing model is being considered by the government. If approved, it would provide a long-term, low risk, regulated return on investment while lowering costs for consumers.
To summarise, using the words of Cottam’s plant manager Andrew Powell, Cottam “is a testament to the professionalism of the team here who have maintained and operated this site with skill and care since 1968”; and it will be exciting to see how this skill and care is maintained in the UK for the next 50 years, and beyond. And how will it be maintained? Through well-tailored business practices and continued investment in low carbon projects.
BioSphere 