The tech-savvy Gippsland apprentices chasing clean, green careers

Adam Stevens is part of a new generation of Gippsland apprentices.

The 21-year-old student and apprentice at Sharper Electrics is coming to the end of his four-year course and getting ready for his final exams at TAFE Gippsland.

“Once I finish my exams, I'll be a qualified electrician. After that, I'm hoping to come back and do some further learning here,” Stevens told the Monitor.

“There are so many different aspects to electrical studies at the moment … wind turbines, batteries, solar. I just want to get a vibe of everything.”

He reckons “more households will have solar” and “a lot of businesses are going to get batteries on top of that. It’s a market that's going to develop more in the next few years”.

The head of Department for Emerging Industries and Trades at TAFE Gippsland, Alex Terranova, told the Monitor Stevens isn’t an outlier.

“We're seeing a lot more younger people coming through, 20 to 21 years of age, who have got a real plan of where they want to go. They’re saying, ‘By the age of 25, I want to run my own business, and I want to be doing this’. They've got a hunger for the latest technology.”

What happened: As Gippsland’s offshore wind industry ramps up and more clean energy projects are established in the designated Renewable Energy Zone (REZ), young Gippslanders are seeing opportunities to forge long-term careers in renewables.

In late April, the federal and Victorian governments announced a $50 million investment into renewable energy training in the state. 

• The package includes $15 million to build a new renewable energy digital training facility at TAFE Gippsland’s Morwell campus.

CEO of Gippsland Climate Change Network, Darren McCubbin, told the Monitor it was vitally important that new industries support jobs for locals: “We don't want to have people flying into this industry. We want to make sure that it's homegrown.”

Work across all age groups

Terranova said TAFE Gippsland was not only teaching young people about careers in renewable technology. 

By way of example, he pointed to the TAFE’s work with Energy Australia on upskilling some of the 450 employees at the ageing Yallourn coal-fired power station, which closes in 2028.

“We understand that there are people with a lot of experience that work in the coal power stations,” Terranova said. “We're helping them to gain new skills to be able to transfer them across to clean energy.”