Dr Adam Read, Chief Sustainability and External Affairs Officer at Suez, has called on ministers to address a disconnect between the Clean Energy Jobs Plan, launched by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), and the Post-16 Education and Skills White Paper, published on Monday (20 October 2025).
Disconnect between skills and strategy
Read welcomed the Government’s new white paper, saying it provided ‘a great framework for putting industry in the driving seat’ through Local Skills Improvement Plans (LSIPs).
Read commented: “By empowering employers to lead LSIPs, the policy enables the waste and recycling sector to finally define for itself the right technical, high-value skills needed for advanced material recovery – the ‘supply’ side of our green economy.”
The white paper aims to reform England’s skills system by ensuring training and qualifications reflect the needs of employers.
LSIPs, led by local business representatives in partnership with colleges and training providers, identify the technical skills required in each area.
Read said this could be transformative for the sector: “This is a crucial foundation, enabling us to counter the green skills awareness gap we identified in our recent research by allowing us to design qualifications that attract the engineers, chemists, and AI specialists required to manage complex circular systems.”
Clean Energy Jobs plan ‘ignores the circularity part’
However, despite progress on the skills side, Read warned that the Government’s Clean Energy Jobs Plan failed to recognise the waste and recycling industry as a core part of the green economy.
He explained: “However, our optimism is tempered by an absence of waste and recycling in the Clean Energy Jobs Plan which focuses on generating clean energy via wind and nuclear – no mention of energy recovery – and also overlooks the foundational link that the resources and waste sector represents in securing secondary raw materials – the lithium, copper, and rare earth elements – needed to manufacture those very technologies.”
The Clean Energy Jobs Plan aims to create 400,000 new jobs by 2030, focusing on expanding the UK’s renewable energy workforce in wind, solar and nuclear sectors.
Thirty-one priority occupations – including plumbers, electricians and welders – have been identified as “particularly in demand”, with employment in clean energy expected to double to 860,000 within five years.
But according to Read, the strategy paints an incomplete picture of what a sustainable energy transition requires.
He warned: “We cannot succeed in the clean energy mission if we do not secure the supply of the materials needed to build the infrastructure.
“The Clean Energy Jobs Plan effectively ignores the ‘circularity’ part of the green economy and the waste and recycling sector’s role as enablers for that circularity.”
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