North Carolina’s clean energy industry is on target to add more than 15,000 new jobs by 2026. Over this same time period, 50% of Duke Energy employees, about 7,000 people, will become eligible for retirement. Further, Duke Energy and the entire industry will need growing expertise in cyber security and grid modernization, and many local energy resources such as offshore wind may or may not be developed, presenting additional job and economic growth potential.
Preparing our workforce for 22,000 additional energy sector jobs by 2026 in a highly dynamic, rapidly growing, and heavily politicized issue area leads to a central question: How are we going to get there?