Written evidence submitted by the Subsurface Skills Group of the UK’s Subsurface Task Force (WFP0046)

SUMMARY

This submission is focused on subsurface skills and expertise, primarily geoscience (geology and geophysics), in line with the Subsurface Task Force’s focus and expertise. Key points are outlined below:

• Geoscience is critical to achievement of government’s 2030 targets since geoscience is instrumental in CO2 storage, long duration energy storage, geothermal energy, nuclear waste sequestration, siting and construction of offshore wind farms, and the exploration and production of (lower emissions) offshore oil and gas, which the UK will be consuming to 2050 and beyond.

• Energy geoscience is a small but highly specialist discipline, and training and experience in the petroleum industry provides skills and expertise that are readily transferable to the nascent and emerging subsurface applications listed above. Increasing numbers of ‘petroleum’ geoscientists and their employers work on more than one of those applications. The distinction between ‘green’/‘clean’ jobs and implicitly non-green/clean jobs is therefore a somewhat misleading simplification as it applies to energy geoscience.

• The Clean Energy Action Plan entails the concurrent pursuit of an array of highly stretching targets. All are reliant on sophisticated, specialist geoscience to enable the siting, de-risking and eventual construction/development and operation of technologies, some of which differ in nature and/or scale from historic subsurface applications with which the UK is familiar and experienced.

• Major concerns exist regarding a clear lack of government understanding of the role of geoscience and of geoscience skills needed to deliver the 2030 targets and achieve net zero by 2050.

• A collapse in geoscience education at school and universities coupled with a lack of recruitment and an aging demographic of geoscientists in the petroleum sector – historically a major employer of geoscientists - signals an emerging shortage of geoscientists as an important risk factor for delivery of government’s 2030 targets.

• Obvious detrimental consequences for skills development and retention arise from government’s approach to the offshore petroleum sector. This sector is a major employer of energy geoscientists, funder of Masters level training and of PhD research/training for energy geoscientists. Current petroleum fiscal conditions and regulatory uncertainty deter new offshore investment and with it the recruitment and training of geoscientists. This is a clear and significant threat to the government’s ability to deliver various strands of the Clean Energy Mission.

• An adverse university environment for the petroleum and other extractive industries undermines initiatives to attract students to study geoscience and consider energy geoscience. University on-campus anti-fossil-fuel postures include blocks on fossil fuel companies recruiting on campus and universities’ refusal to accept research and Masters studentships from oil/gas companies despite their activities in offshore wind and CO2 storage and a clear strategic need to develop more energy geoscientists.

• Given that university output of suitably qualified geoscientists has collapsed, the 2030 clean energy targets appear to be at risk of under-supply of the relevant specialist geoscience skills and expertise. The anticipated shortfall of UK “home-grown” energy geoscientists will necessitate a backfill of these requisite skills through immigration, in competition with other countries facing broadly similar challenges and needs.

Key Recommendations

Key recommendations include:

• Recognise geoscience as a stressed subject which is critical to the delivery of 2030 targets and beyond. Geoscience needs strategic support and funding from government and a joined-up response to the challenges identified, overcoming the departmental barriers and lack of strategic or longer term thinking evidenced by senior civil servants.

• Recognise and support the key role of the offshore petroleum sector in delivery of government 2030 targets, including those for wind power, CO2 storage/CCS, oil/gas emissions reduction, and in respect of geoscience employment, education, training and development. Government policies and actions are urgently needed to provide fiscal and regulatory certainty to encourage investment in the offshore petroleum sector, with positive employment and workforce development consequences.

• Engage with relevant groups to determine strategies and actions to promote and increase university enrolment in geoscience and the teaching of geology in schools. There is a clear need to adopt actions which can boost the number of geology graduates and post-graduates as the ageing petroleum workforce gradually leaves the labour market.

• Ensure that the Office for Students regulates universities such that Masters level and post-graduate research funding from natural resource and energy companies is facilitated, not blocked, and such companies are able to fully participate in on-campus recruitment and careers promotion activities.

ABOUT THE SUBSURFACE TASK FORCE AND THIS SUBMISSION

The Subsurface Task Force (STF) is one of several task forces within the North Sea Transition Forum with the North Sea Transition Authority, Ministers from Westminster and the Scottish government, trade unions, civil servants and industry. The STF comprises mainly geologists and geophysicists i.e. subsurface experts - scientists and professionals - in industry and academia. Its mission is to promote responsible use of the UK’s subsurface storage and energy resources to ensure energy security, reduce the UK’s emissions impact and deliver societal and economic value. The STF’s Subsurface Skills Group (SSG) is chaired by Graham Goffey (Soliton Resources) and seeks to highlight the criticality of geoscience to achieving net zero and to promote collaborative actions across the energy sector towards boosting geoscience education, employment and related workplace skills.

This submission initially summarises the key role of geoscience skills and expertise towards government’s 2030 and net zero targets and provides a summary of the crisis in education, training and development of geoscience skills. It then addresses those elements of the inquiry’s terms of reference where subsurface skills are critical, failures are evident and/or government action can improve the situation. It takes an evidence-based and whole system approach to energy supply, recognising that the new government’s learning curve in this area is steep and the UK’s reliance on oil/gas for c. 80% of its primary energy will take many decades to reduce, notwithstanding the 2030 targets.

The critical role of geoscience in achieving government’s 2030 and net zero targets

In this context, geoscience refers to geology, geophysics and related, highly specialist areas of expertise which are developed from an initial undergraduate earth science or related education and normally taken to Masters, PhD and sometimes to post-doctorate level. Geoscience is a discipline with a modestly sized workforce. But the required, high-level skills and expertise are essential to most of the present and future sources of energy supply as outlined below, hence this submission is focused on energy geoscience. The criticality of geoscience and many of the issues, challenges and mitigations discussed here are also echoed in the critical minerals sector[1].

Figure 1. Summary illustration of the key subsurface energy applications/sectors discussed here, indicatively illustrating relative subsurface workforce scale, anticipated trajectory to 2050 and nature of employers of geoscientists.

For an explanation of the types of employer, see Appendix A.

Key energy applications/sectors employing geoscientists:

• Medium to long duration energy storage is essential to providing backup to intermittent renewables. Subsurface storage of hydrogen, natural gas (in which the UK is markedly deficient) and, if developed, compressed air energy storage, is reliant on geoscience expertise through the storage life cycle. Geoscientists locate and ensure safe and appropriate storage locations, cost-efficient development, secure storage, appropriate injection/withdrawal rates and eventual safe retirement of these sites. Similarly, pumped hydro storage sites depend on geoscience expertise for the ground engineering aspects of their siting and construction.
• CO2 storage (also known as carbon capture and storage, CCS) is key to mitigating the carbon emissions of hard-to-abate sectors such as cement manufacture, heavy industry and gas-fired power generation which for the will foreseeable future be the UK’s main dispatchable backup for intermittent renewables. Geoscience plays a similarly critical life-of-store role here to energy storage, in respect of storage site identification, exploration, development, CO2 injection, storage assurance and the long-term monitoring and verification of sites. There is no precedent for development of CO2 storage on the scale envisaged over the next several decades and the learning curve for geoscientists in re-purposing the subsurface for CO2 storage will be steep, despite appreciable technical overlaps with petroleum-related expertise and knowledge.
• Nuclear waste sequestration: the UK’s legacy and future nuclear waste will be mostly stored in deep subsurface geological repositories which will be identified, located, de-risked, developed and monitored for the long term substantially through the application of subsurface geoscience expertise. As with CO2 storage, there is little precedent for using the subsurface in this way and high levels of expertise are similarly required.
• Offshore/onshore wind turbine siting and cable routing is reliant on geoscience skills and expertise to collect and interpret data on ground and seabed conditions in order to ensure appropriate and secure turbine and anchor foundations and to route power cables to shore. This ground survey and engineering phase generally takes several years in the early stages following the award of offshore wind licences but lacks the longer-term aspects of most other applications outlined here.
• Geothermal applications for deep heat and power, in addition to low enthalpy (near surface) heating and cooling applications (such as mine water energy being developed by the Mining Remediation Authority, formerly the Coal Authority) are all dependent on geological expertise to locate, develop and monitor subsurface sites capable of commercial development under the sometimes commercially challenging conditions of geothermal projects.
• Lower emissions oil and gas production: Government’s clean power mission is slowly acknowledging the necessity for long term retention of a substantial reserve of gas-fired power generation and, by implication, for gas supply. With fast-declining offshore production, the UK’s growing reliance on imported oil, gas and liquified natural gas (LNG) is evident in Carbon Budget projections, whilst the lower emissions intensity of new UK production is clear (Figure 2). The UK’s fiscal and regulatory regimes currently discourage activity/investment in the sector and without meaningful offshore activity the geoscience workforce will continue to rapidly decline. Conversely, with appropriate fiscal and regulatory regimes, geoscientists can continue to play a key role in eking out declining UK oil and gas production and in the delivery of the offshore industries’ North Sea Transition Deal targets for reduction of production-related greenhouse gas emissions, as referenced in the Clean Energy Plan.

Figure 2. Greenhouse gas production emissions intensity of UK domestic gas and oil production relative to imported gas/liquified natural gas (LNG) and oil2

Note: excludes Scope 3 – demand related – emissions.

Crisis in geoscience education and graduate output

The Subsurface Task Force’s 2023 report ‘Geoscience Skills in Crisis’[2] highlighted key issues include:

• Collapse in geoscience education: A level geology student numbers have fallen to a quarter of their peak, whilst 1st Year undergraduate numbers fell by more than 40% in just a few years (Figure 3). Energy and resource-related Masters level courses are closing, with an average of just 3 home students per course in 2022/23, whilst in 2023 the successful GeoNetZero Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) multi-university collaboration - was unfunded going forward.

Significant contributory factors include long term decline in schools level geology, jobs uncertainty, the cost of post-graduate study and negative extractive industry perceptions.

Figure 3: Cumulative and annual changes in UK nationals studying science in the UK at undergraduate level (first years 2014-19) – note geology declined by almost 10% per annum (source: Geological Society)

• Insufficient recruitment and an ageing workforce demographic in the petroleum sector, the largest employer of energy geoscientists, have led to a skew towards the over 50’s, with relatively few geoscientists below the age of 35 and a deficit of UK nationals being developed for the future.
• Limited career appeal: new recruits and post-graduate students are concerned about sectoral volatility, uncertain government support e.g. for CCS, limited job security, unclear career pathways and negative public perceptions of the sector.
• Insufficient action to address the deteriorating situation: industries and government are not comprehensively collaborating together with universities to tackle declining university enrolment.

• Accelerated decline of the UK petroleum industry has a major negative impact on employment, recruitment and training: the UK’s offshore petroleum sector has historically been the dominant, major employer of energy geoscientists and acted as a large-scale training platform for development of expertise and skills in a highly professional, technically rigorous and historically well-funded sector. Other than perhaps CCS over the longer term, the other subsurface applications detailed above are generally unable to fulfil the petroleum industry’s historic role in employing geoscientists and funding training and development to build the workforce of the future, due to their presently limited scale, early-stage nature and absence of profitability. Accelerated UK petroleum industry decline due to a fiscal and regulatory regime which largely deters investment and has eliminated profitability (Figure 4) means that employment, training and development of geoscientists for the future is not taking place on a meaningful scale.

Figure 4. Profitability of UKCS oil/gas and applicable headline tax rate (source: ONS[3] and House of Commons Library 2024).

Note: net rates of return are indicative for Continental Shelf companies because of the nature of the fixed assets which leads to distortions in the average capital employed.

‘Self-help’ actions being pursued by the Subsurface Task Force and industry

The SSG has been prioritizing low cost ‘self-help’ initiatives within the offshore sector e.g. student internships, mentoring and STEM ambassador schemes, creating career pathway material for A level and university students and by forming the Energy Geoscience Forum, a sectoral collaboration of almost 20 organisations to drive collaboration and coordination in respect of promoting geoscience education and careers development.

Industry is investment in training and education is markedly reduced. Whilst some larger companies are still recruiting some post-graduate geoscientists, due to fiscal/regulatory challenges, many petroleum sector companies are not recruiting and training is much reduced. A group of oil/gas and integrated energy companies recently pledged £0.6MM in funding for a new Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) research initiative at the University of Aberdeen, focused on decarbonising the oil and gas sector. This funding is well below the £2.5MM donation made by just one company in 2018 for the GeoNetZero CDT and the £3MM secured from the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) in 2013. All 110 PhD graduates to date from this programme have secured employment in a relevant discipline.

The initiatives outlined above are modest in scale and have limited ability to tackle broader challenges arising e.g. from the structure of school curricula, low availability of post-graduate funding, anti-fossil fuel postures in universities, etc. Many universities block fossil fuel companies from recruiting on campus, refuse to accept research and Masters studentships from such companies and for largely ideological reasons actively avoid engagement with the petroleum sector, disregarding its role in e.g. CO2 storage and wind power generation.

RESPONSE TO SPECIFIC QUESTIONS RAISED IN THE TERMS OF REFERENCE

1. Does the Government have an appropriate understanding of the skills needs to deliver the Clean Energy Mission by 2030 as well as decarbonise homes and businesses? 

Key Points

Evidence suggests negligible government awareness or understanding of the challenges with respect to collapsed geoscience graduate and post-graduate output and its potential impact on the achievement of net zero targets.

Lack of departmental ‘ownership’ of geoscience: a Cabinet Office secondee in the Government Office for Science reported to us that the UK’s subsurface falls between multiple government departments, none having overall oversight or responsibility. This conclusion was amplified by a 2023 meeting2 between representatives of the Centre for Masters Training[4] (CMT) and of the GeoNetZero Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) and Director/Deputy Director/Team Leader-level civil servants from the DESNZ, DfE and DSIT. That geoscience education/research has no clear ‘home’ in government was underlined by the attendance of three government departments to the above-mentioned meeting. An extraordinary level of misunderstanding and perhaps functional prejudice was displayed by one Director-level attendee from DESNZ who stated that they “Do not see the benefit of geoscience as the means by which to meet 78% emissions targets by 2030” and consider “the premise that geoscientists were the need was not valid”.

A narrow and short-term administrative focus was evidenced by civil servants, with an absence of strategic thinking; the departmental focus on workforce deliverables needed for 2030 seemed to consider Masters and PhD level training to be too long term to be of relevance and the government’s role was entirely fulfilled by DfE funding of undergraduates via student loans.

The historic withdrawal of state funding from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) for Masters training, coupled with factors including lower recruitment and funding by the petroleum industry and the impact of student debt has been catastrophic for output of Masters students. Geoscientists acquire skills and expertise through petroleum industry training and experience that are transferable to nascent and emerging applications such as CO2 storage, geothermal, radioactive waste sequestration, etc.  

It is not apparent that Government understands the detrimental consequences of the current state of the UK’s petroleum industry for the supply and development of geoscientists at all levels. This is a clear and significant threat to the government’s ability to deliver various strands of the Clean Energy Mission and to maintain momentum towards net zero 2050 using an indigenous, highly skilled geoscience workforce. The petroleum industry’s instrumental role in training, employing and developing geoscientists is highly reduced as a result of the sector’s highly uncertain future trajectory in the UK and the Energy Profits Levy (Figure 4).

2. To what extent can the Clean Energy Mission and the retrofitting of homes and businesses be carried out by the existing workforce and to what extent will it require new entrants to the workforce?  

Summary

The Clean Energy Action Plan entails the concurrent pursuit of an array of highly stretching targets, all reliant on sophisticated, specialist geoscience to enable the siting, de-risking and eventual construction/development progress of what are mostly substantial subsurface-related infrastructure projects. CO2 storage, energy storage and, on a shorter-term basis, the wind sector will drive growing demand for geoscientists this decade and beyond. Increased demand for geoscientists is also likely in nascent subsurface applications - geothermal, nuclear waste sequestration, energy storage - and critical minerals sectors. Risks to the delivery e.g. of CO2 storage[5], as a result of competition for skilled resources could be a drag on the process of scaling-up CO2 storage, and other subsurface sectors.

The future of the UK’s offshore petroleum industry is dependent on government decisions which introduce uncertainty over the rate of decline of indigenous production, and with it the willingness to recruit and train new UK geoscientists. If post-graduate output remains depressed, we would expect major companies to recruit globally in whereas companies in emerging sectors, such as geothermal, may not find this to be an economically and practically viable route to filling geoscientist vacancies.

There is a relatively small pool of experienced geoscientists, tending towards the over 50’s and rapidly moving into retirement.

Provision of talented, skilled graduates, particularly in geoscience, is critical for the UK energy sector: funding for vocational Masters course is no longer provided by UKRI, despite the strategic need for geoscientists and indications that falling student numbers is partially a result of the undergraduate debt load.

The 2030 clean energy targets appear to be at risk of under-supply of the relevant specialist geoscience skills and expertise. If not addressed, the anticipated shortfall of

geoscientists will necessitate a backfill of these requisite skills through immigration, in competition with other developed world countries with broadly similar challenges in geoscience education (e.g. Europe and the USA).

Key areas of demand for energy geoscientists

The Clean Energy Action Plan identifies an array of targeted, medium to long lead duration outcomes, a number of which are immature technologies/applications which are likely to have steep learning curves. All are critically dependent on sufficient, suitably qualified and experienced geoscientists, with recognised challenges to the availability of such a workforce, as discussed below:

• Subsurface storage: including CO2 storage and grid-scale hydrogen storage. The Subsurface Task Force has identified considerable risks to the delivery of offshore CO2 storage since there are insufficient CCS projects in appraisal, at Final Investment Decision and commissioning stages to deliver 6th Carbon Budget’s commitments and targets5.

Long duration energy storage would involve long lead technologies (e.g. pumped hydro), emerging technologies (e.g. compressed air energy storage) and, we would expect, new gas storage. The accelerated decline of domestic gas production means growing reliance on often uncontracted, just-in-time LNG imports. The UK holds extremely limited gas storage relative to demand (Figure 5), as a result of its previous excess of domestic gas production. In combination with the rapid decline in gas production, this will likely undermine endeavours to limit exposure to gas price variability unless meaningful gas storage capacity is constructed.

Figure 5. Natural gas storage capacity in the UK and European countries presented against annual demand in 2018[6]

Note: bubble size represents present storage capacity as a percentage of annual demand

These are all complicated, long lead projects. As an example, storage of gas (and in future, hydrogen) in salt caverns has a lead time of 7-9 years[7] from planning to construction, although can sometimes be faster. Other large-scale storage applications will similarly have long evaluation, planning and construction lead times.

The SSG contributed analysis and insights to the Green Jobs Delivery Group’s Labour Market Assessment Report for CCS (CO2 storage)[8] which specifically highlighted geoscience:

“This is an area of advanced skills and qualifications, potentially requiring Master's or PhD level talent. While this population includes just a small number of qualified people, they tend to be well-qualified, aged over 50, and can often compete for jobs internationally. Qualified geoscientists therefore represent a small but exposed segment of the labour market.”

Figure 6 highlight geoscience as one of the disciplines with greatest difficulty to recruit; a consequence of limited availability, advanced training/experience needs to develop the skills and expertise needed to fill geoscientist roles in CCS.

Figure 6. CCS Sector Heatmap8

• Wind power: this will require extensive geoscience-led survey and analysis of ground conditions to enable turbine, anchor and cable siting and installation.  The wind sector’s geoscience needs are towards the front end of wind projects, associated with planning, design and installation.

• Offshore oil and gas: the Clean Energy Action Plan recognises the need for delivery of the emissions reduction targets contained in 2021’s North Sea Transition Deal, including methane reduction and zero routine flaring by 2030. Amended fiscal terms and regulations will be needed if the government wishes the industry to contribute to a homegrown energy transition, employment and energy security with investment to maximise emissions reduction and optimally manage existing fields for their economic lives in line with the statutory requirement to maximise economic recovery. Investment in renewed drilling in existing fields and the development of new fields is dependent on a skilled geoscience workforce which will need a larger output of geologists from university than is currently the case.

• Other: the Clean Energy Action Plan makes no specific reference to geothermal energy but we assume that along with nuclear energy, this lies within the category of emerging low carbon and renewable technologies that the Plan envisages will play an important role beyond 2030. We believe that with appropriate support and encouragement, geothermal energy, particularly in shallow cooling and heating applications, is capable of an accelerated contribution before 2030. Presently geothermal is a very small UK sector employing relatively few geoscientists but early-stage government support could drive rapid growth in projects and consequent demand for suitably qualified geoscientists.

3. How might the Government ensure that the job market in clean energy roles is sustainable enough to incentivise private sector investment in training for 2030 and beyond?

This will require government actions across a range of areas to increase the output of undergraduate and post-graduate geoscientists focussed on energy geosciences (and critical minerals). A non-exhaustive suite of recommendations follows:

Ensure that geoscience is suitably represented on industry-government skills groups relevant to the energy transition and 2030 targets and in DfE discussions on geography and science curriculum development meetings.

Recognise geoscience as a stressed subject which is critical to the delivery of 2030 targets and beyond and, as such, needs strategic direction and funding from government.

Provide fiscal and regulatory certainty and conditions which encourage investment in the offshore petroleum sector: direct benefits will accrue in terms of employment, energy security, etc. This will provide conditions for continued employment, renewed recruitment, training and development of geoscientists. Slowing the decline of oil and gas production via new investment can counter decline in geoscience employment in the sector, retaining and ensure that a skilled workforce is available to also scale-up CO2 storage, energy storage, etc.

Engage with the Geological Society, University Geosciences UK and other relevant groups to determine strategies and actions to promote and increase university enrolment in the geoscience and the teaching of geology in schools. The aim would be to increase the supply of geoscientists coming through school to university, towards a sustainable geoscience workforce in the late 2020’s and beyond.

Ensure that the Office for Students regulates universities such that post-graduate funding from natural resource and energy companies is facilitated, not blocked, and such companies are able to fully participate in on-campus recruitment and careers promotion activities. As with charities, universities should only be able to reject such donated funding in exceptional cases. Companies producing oil and gas are all vetted by the regulator. Their involvement in producing oil and gas, which provides 80% of UK primary energy supply, cannot be a reason to bar access or refuse funds, especially given the parlous state of university finances.

D. How can the new Office for Clean Energy jobs contribute to workforce planning in the energy sector? 

A number of key points and suggestions follow:

Transferability of geoscientists from the major employment sector – petroleum - to other sectors critically depends on the rate of oil and gas asset decline and the growth of employment in other geoscience sectors discussed above. Geoscientists are increasingly able to transfer readily between different subsurface sectors, typically based on skills and expertise gained in the petroleum sector. However, the decline of UKCS production is accelerating and geoscience employment will likely fall quicker than production since it is closely correlated with field and exploration investment.

There is a high risk that accelerated oil and gas production decline drives job losses appreciably earlier than CO2 storage is able to offer sizeable employment opportunities. CO2 storage most closely matches and utilises petroleum-related geoscience expertise but the CO2 project pipeline is slow and insufficient as the CO2 appraisal/permitting/development is highly protracted5.

Government needs to recognise and support the key role of the offshore petroleum sector in delivery of government 2030 targets (e.g. for wind power and CCS) and its role in respect of geoscience employment, education, training and development. Promoting investment in eking out UK offshore oil and gas production and reserves would lead to positive employment and workforce development consequences, with beneficial impacts on delivery of 2030 targets.

Advanced skillsets such as geoscience, although small in volume, will play a critical role in delivering 2030 targets. There is a clear need to adopt actions which can boost the number of geology graduates and post-graduates as the ageing workforce gradually leaves the labour market. The Office for Clean Energy jobs can promote a joined-up government response to this challenge, overcoming the governmental issues discussed above.

Long-term policy certainty is needed across a number of the sectors employing geoscientists, with government support for geoscience education: near term implementation of relatively low cost measures would include support for the CMT’s online energy geoscience Masters programme, funding of Masters studentships for home students (no longer offered by UKRI’s Natural Environment Research Council) and dedicated funding for the relevant Centre for Doctoral Training and its PhD’s.

5. What more can the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero do to ensure the workforce is in place to deliver the Clean Energy Mission and accelerate the retrofitting of homes and businesses? 

Recommendations are listed under Question C and D above and to the extent that these fall under the remit of DESNZ, they should be considered as items for DESNZ to action/support.

Appendix A

Figure 7. Explanation of categories of privately-held and publicly-listed companies active in the energy sector which employ energy geoscientists, with example companies.

January 2025