2025 - A Year In Review

2025 has been a year of progress for the GWO community, defined by strong collaboration and advancing targeted workforce initiatives. From the publication of new and updated training standards to the launch of strategic partnerships, we have made great strides across all areas of the business and reinforced GWO’s role in supporting a safe, competent, and future-ready global energy workforce.  

Moving Into Solar

This year saw us expand our remit and pursue a formal role in the solar workforce with the release of the Solar Safety Training and Solar Technical Training Standards, launched in partnership with Global Solar Council (GSC). The establishment of the Global Solar Training Committee, with Dennis T. Elsberg, Vice President of HSQE and Competence Management Global Services at RES, as its Chair, demonstrates our shared commitment to high-quality workforce development, and the trust placed in us through this collaboration. This has ensured our entry into the solar sector, bringing together GWO, GSC and industry leaders to accelerate adoption of standardised solar training. Our agreement with the Global Solar Council reflects strong trust from the solar industry and significantly expands our reach. We thank everyone involved for placing this trust in us.

Welcome to our new Members

We also welcomed several new members to the GWO community and expanded our membership to include ISPs and EPCs, the very employers where an increasing number of wind technicians start their careers. These were:

1. TAKKION, the first independent service provider to join GWO,  

2. Qair joined as a Leading Member, taking a seat on GWO’s General Assembly to help shape our strategic direction.  

3. RES, the world’s largest independent renewable energy company with four decades of global project experience, and  

4. Global Wind Service, a leading partner for wind turbine installation and service projects all around the globe.  

Each of these organisations brings unique experience, resources, and enthusiasm to our work, and their membership underscores the value of common training standards in driving a safer, more capable workforce. We thank them for their trust and willingness to engage with us.

Global Wind Workforce Outlook

A major focus for us this year was workforce development and ensuring the renewable energy sector is equipped with a future-ready workforce. This focus was underpinned by the recent launch of the Global Wind Workforce Outlook 2025–2030 (GWWO), which provided a data-driven assessment of workforce demand and readiness across the wind industry. Across all markets, the report identifies common challenges, including technician shortages, the need to expand training capacity, and the importance of improving workforce retention. We are now working for a harmonised and uniform approach across the wind industries to address these challenges.  

Workforce Development

As a direct response to the workforce gaps outlined in the GWWO, we advanced a number of workforce initiatives aimed at strengthening skills, mobility, and long-term workforce resilience. In Q1, we reached a significant milestone through a new cross-skilling pilot programme to support worker transferability between oil and gas, and wind (launched in collaboration with the Engineering Construction Industry Training Board (ECITB) and ORE Catapult). Designed to support the UK’s rapidly expanding wind sector, the programme enables the two-way transition of qualified oil and gas technicians into wind roles and back again, helping to address skills shortages while supporting a mobile workforce.  

Complementing these efforts, the ongoing development of Jobs4RE also played a key role in supporting workforce development, focused on providing entryways into the industry. Over the past 12 months, we have made significant progress in developing this scalable framework to help governments and industry better connect people to training and employment opportunities, improve visibility of career pathways, and support workforce attraction, transition, and retention.  

New Standards Launched

Although 2025 saw an increased focus on workforce development, we also made significant progress in updating and publishing new training standards. This year, we released updates to ten training standards which included Hand Tool Awareness and Dropped Object Prevention training to better protect technicians and equipment. The unveiling of three brand-new training standards then followed: the GWO High Voltage Training Standard (Operations & Cable Pulling modules) and the Solar Safety Training and Solar Technical Training Standards, launched with GSC.

Safety and Training Forum

With the focus on the launch of the Global Solar Training Standards in the summer, we welcomed GSC as our new event partner at the Safety & Training Forum 2025 in Madrid. Joined by our community of training providers, we heard from a range of leading voices in both wind and solar to discuss system-level solutions to workforce planning and adapting wind training expertise to the solar sector. A highlight of the two days was our annual Awards ceremony, now in its fourth edition. This year saw the return of the Training Team of the Year, Instructor of the Year, and Young Achiever awards, with winners from across the globe present to accept their honours. You can see all of the recipients here.  

Internally, 2025 has been a year of significant organisational growth and strengthening capacity. We have significantly grown our team and will continue to do so in the coming year to ensure we can support our community across our growing scope of activities.  

The year also marked an important moment of transition for our staff, with the announcement that Ralph Savage, GWO’s Chief Stakeholder Relations Officer, will step down from his role at the end of January. Over the past eight years, Ralph has made a significant contribution to GWO, helping to shape and strengthen our communications, engagement, and stakeholder relations functions. We extend our sincere thanks to Ralph for his outstanding contribution and wish him every success in the next chapter of his professional journey.  

Together, these developments reflect a year of purposeful progress for GWO and its community. As the energy transition accelerates, our focus remains on quality, collaboration, and supporting a skilled global workforce. Building on the foundations laid in 2025, we look ahead with confidence to the opportunities and challenges of the year to come.  

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