Education programs help fill jobs pipeline: mass retirements loom as U.S. energy jobs are poised to nearly double.

• Position: WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT

While many traditional industries are reducing their workforces as a result of off-shoring, improved productivity or greater reliance on technology, the energy industry is facing the opposite problem. Leaders started sounding the alarm years ago as more baby boomers neared retirement age; a 2011 report by the Nuclear Energy Institute noted that the electric power industry needs to replace 100,000 skilled workers--more than one-fourth of them in the nuclear sector--by 2015. Earlier this year recruitment and employment agency Manpower Inc. issued a report stating that while jobs in the U.S. energy sector are expected to nearly double to 3 million by 2020, 72 percent of energy employers surveyed are worried their inability to find quality candidates will hamper North American competitiveness.

In the Carolinas, several programs are working to ensure that energy companies from public utilities to alternative-energy vendors to nuclear reactor builders have access to a full pipeline of employees. In the Charlotte region alone, more than 260 energy-related companies, including the nation's largest public utility, employ roughly 28,000 people, including 11,000 engineers.

Area educational institutions have taken note. At Central Piedmont Community College in Charlotte, about 2,700 students are working toward two-year degrees in the energy-related disciplines of computer-integration technology, construction management technology, electrical engineering technology, mechatronics, non-destructive examination technology and welding technology. The degrees fall under the umbrella of the Center for Energy Training (CET), established at CPCC in 2013 at the suggestion of an advisory group of about 20 area energy executives, says Mary Vickers-Koch, dean of business and industry learning.

These two-year degree programs represent the fields predicted to face the biggest shortages or see the greatest industry demand. "Were seeing an aging-out in power generation, transmission and distribution as well as manufacturing says Vickers-Koch, adding that the college recognized energy was "becoming a market that the Charlotte area could tap into." The program also reflects the growing emphasis that employers are placing on middle-skills jobs that don't require a four-year degree but call for more education and training than a high school diploma provides. Forty percent of jobs created over the next few years will require those middle skills, she says.

Frequent surveys of...