Design Automation Software Poised to Bridge Global Engineering Skills Gap in Renewable Energy

The global energy transition, despite massive investments in renewables, faces a major choke point,  a worldwide shortage of skilled energy engineers.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), achieving Net Zero by 2050 will require the creation of 30 million new clean energy jobs by 2030, yet the world is projected to fall short by seven million skilled workers. The gap spans critical fields such as engineering, project development, and technical installation.

In the utility-scale solar sector alone, nearly USD 12 billion will be spent on design over the next five years, equivalent to around 12,000 work-years of engineering labour.

“This imbalance points toward the urgent need for engineering automation tools to dramatically accelerate the output and effectiveness of the existing global engineering workforce,” says Paul Nel, CEO of 7SecondSolar. “Computational tools like AutoPV can knock months off a project timeline for a utility-scale solar plant. Software like this can generate construction-ready outputs for multiple designs within hours, empowering engineers to focus on value optimisation rather than manual repetition," he noted.

The shortage is evident across global markets. South Africa has fewer than 40,000 registered professional engineers. In Germany, over 18,300 energy transition-related vacancies went unfilled in 2024. France must recruit 43,000 people by 2030 to modernise its grid, and Australia expects a deficit of 17,400 skilled energy workers.

This trend highlights a crucial truth, human capacity, not funding, is now the biggest bottleneck in renewable energy deployment.

By 2030, global installed solar PV capacity is projected to surpass 7 TW, accounting for roughly 65 percent of the 11 TW renewable energy target set at COP28. Meeting this demand will require not just more engineers, but smarter engineering through automation.

Another area needing urgent reform is the education pipeline. Research shows 68 percent of the world’s energy education programs still focus on fossil fuels, while only 32 percent cover renewable energy. As the balance tilts toward clean energy, universities must integrate computational design and automation tools into curricula to prepare engineers for modern project complexity.

“The energy sector can no longer afford the months-long manual processes traditionally required for a single utility-scale project design,” Nel adds. “Computational software must become the new baseline for engineering education and practice. Since adding seven million skilled engineers by 2030 is unrealistic, we must instead multiply the productivity of every single engineer, ensuring that projects remain both bankable and fast to deliver," he noted.