The UK Climate Change Committee forecasts up to 725,000 net new jobs could be created by 2030 in low carbon industries. However, PwC has highlighted skills shortages as the biggest barrier to green jobs growth. Education and training providers are not equipped to provide the training learners need to address the green skills gap, particularly in green collar vocational roles in construction, energy, and transport. 73% of UK young people feel uninformed about green job opportunities and 1 in 8 people in the UK currently have a job specific green skill according to LinkedIn’s Green Skills report.
This project will create a Green Skills Coach – a careers and vocational training guidance chat-based service using artificial intelligence (AI). The tool will offer personalised coaching support and information on training paths and apprenticeships for young people in secondary education, Further Education or through Job Centres, helping them get job-ready for the Net Zero workforce. The Coach is designed to work as a standalone chatbot for use in education, job centres and employer career sites as part of the wider GetZero platform for Green Skills. The web-based product will combine bite-sized e-learning with game-based learning.
This solution will broaden access to the emerging green skills vocational training market while providing a deeper, more personalised training journey with career guidance. If successful, this project will showcase a new way of using AI in vocational learning by using a large language model combined with local knowledge, helping to train the AI more accurately and with the most relevant knowledge.