By Abdulaziz Khattak
As artificial intelligence (AI) adoption accelerates across all three energy sectors, a deepening skills shortage, an ageing workforce, and a widening gap between the career development professionals demand and what employers actually provide are combining to create a strategic talent emergency that threatens project delivery at scale.
The 2026 Global Energy Talent Index (GETI), which draws on responses from more than 9,000 energy professionals and hiring managers across 143 countries, reveals an industry navigating profound structural tension.
A buoyant project pipeline is generating fierce competition for talent on one side, and on the other there is a workforce growing older, less mobile, and increasingly anxious about AI’s impact on career trajectories.
The findings cut across traditional, transitional, and future energy sectors, and the patterns they expose are consistent, urgent, and in several respects worsening.
Salary sentiment across all three segments remains broadly positive. In traditional energy, half of all professionals reported a pay increase over the past 12 months, a figure unchanged from the previous year, whilst 60 per cent of hiring managers confirmed compensation had risen.
In transitional energy, which includes power, nuclear, and electricity grid, 53 per cent of professionals reported pay growth, against 63 per cent of hiring managers.
In renewables, 51 per cent of professionals received a rise, compared with 59 per cent of hiring managers.
Yet optimism about future pay is softening. In the renewables segment, hiring managers anticipating rises above 5 per cent has fallen steadily from 45 per cent in 2024 to 37 per cent this year, reflecting subdued global economic conditions that are prompting some organisations to redirect capital away from human resources and towards AI investment.
WORKFORCE AGEING FASTER THAN INDUSTRY CAN RESPOND
The demographic shift underway across the global energy workforce is accelerating at a rate that should concern boardrooms and policymakers alike.
In traditional energy, professionals aged 45 and over now account for 48 per cent of the total workforce, a 26 per cent increase since 2023, whilst the share of those aged between 25 and 34 has declined to just 19 per cent, down from 21 per cent the previous year.
In transitional energy, the proportion of professionals under 35 fell from 37 per cent in 2025 to 34 per cent this year, with over-45s now representing 36 per cent of the segment, up 44 per cent since 2023.
Renewables mirrors this trajectory, with under-35s falling from 38 per cent to 35 per cent year on year, and the over-45 share rising 48 per cent since 2023 to reach 34 per cent.
The compounding effect of this demographic compression is that knowledge is concentrating in an increasingly narrow age band.
Retirement, when it occurs, frequently creates what Céline Gerson, Group Director Americas at Fugro, describes as an overnight gap that is not easily filled.
Phased retirement and the retention of highly skilled workers as part-time consultants are emerging as interim responses, with 20 per cent of traditional energy hiring managers already reporting they are delaying retirement as a strategy, and 19 per cent of professionals indicating openness to extended working arrangements.
However, these measures address symptoms rather than causes. Only a third of traditional energy hiring managers are actively recruiting graduates to build longer-term talent pipelines, a figure that underscores the sector’s continued under-investment in early career development.
The picture is further complicated by declining appetite for international mobility. In traditional energy, the proportion of professionals willing to consider relocation has fallen to 75 per cent, its lowest recorded level, down sharply from 89 per cent in 2022.
In transitional energy, that figure has declined to 69 per cent from 87 per cent in 2021.
Renewables professionals show an almost identical trend, with willingness to relocate dropping from 85 per cent in 2021 to 71 per cent in 2026.
Career progression remains the primary draw to any given location across all segments, cited by between 45 and 58 per cent of respondents depending on sector, but proximity to family is the single most common barrier to relocation, cited by 39 to 42 per cent across the three groups.
For a sector that has historically relied on a globally mobile workforce to deliver complex, geographically dispersed infrastructure projects, this contraction in mobility represents a structural risk to project delivery timelines.
ROLES REMAIN UNFILLED AS AI COMPOUNDS PARADOX
Engineering and technical operations roles remain the most difficult to fill across all three energy segments.
In traditional energy, 50 per cent of hiring managers identify these as their greatest recruitment challenge, with maintenance and inspection and project management trailing at 27 and 24 per cent respectively.
In transitional energy, the figure rises to 53 per cent for engineering and technical roles. Across all segments, half or more of hiring managers report that candidates lack the necessary technical skills, with experience deficits and leadership gaps also consistently cited.
The paradox at the heart of this recruitment challenge is that the roles most difficult to fill are precisely those that professionals believe AI is most likely to cannibalise.
In traditional energy, 32 per cent of professionals believe engineering and technical operations roles are at risk from AI displacement.
In transitional energy, that figure stands at 31 per cent; in renewables, 28 per cent.
Roles in data analytics, AI and digital, and IT and software development attract the highest perceived risk across all segments.
Between 45 and 49 per cent of respondents in each sector identify these functions as most vulnerable.
Executive leadership, health, safety and environment, and legal and compliance functions are consistently rated as least at risk.
A related concern centres on entry-level roles. In traditional energy, 31 per cent of professionals believe AI is already reducing the number of entry-level positions, against just 13 per cent who hold the opposite view.
In transitional energy, 37 per cent hold this view; in renewables, this is a notch higher, at 38 per cent.
This matters acutely because entry-level roles currently represent the easiest hiring category across all segments, yet they function as the primary pipeline through which new talent enters the industry.
If AI-driven restructuring is allowed to hollow out this entry point, the medium-term consequences for experienced talent availability will be severe.
CAREER DEVELOPMENT GAP BETWEEN PROFESSIONALS AND EMPLOYERS
Across all three energy segments, fewer than half of professionals possess a formal career development plan.
In traditional energy, 46 per cent report having a plan; in transitional energy the figure rises marginally to 52 per cent; in renewables it falls to 48 per cent.
Of those without a plan, the majority are either self-directing their own development or awaiting employer action that has yet to materialise.
Given that last year’s GETI identified the absence of a clear career progression pathway as the single leading cause of job dissatisfaction, the failure to close this gap represents a measurable and avoidable retention risk.
Industry training is consistently the most valued career development option across all segments, cited by 55 to 57 per cent of professionals.
Extended formal education, such as certificates, diplomas, and university degrees, is valued by 41 to 47 per cent of professionals depending on sector.
Yet employer provision of formal education support reaches only 23 to 28 per cent across the three segments.
In-house training is more commonly offered, at 34 to 36 per cent, but is valued considerably less.
The mismatch between what professionals prize and what employers provide is systematic and persistent.
AI adoption, meanwhile, is advancing rapidly and is beginning to function as an informal career development mechanism.
In traditional energy, 45 per cent of professionals now use AI in their role, a 187 per cent increase since 2024; in transitional energy, 54 per cent use it, up 180 per cent in two years.
In renewables, nearly two-thirds (60 per cent) use AI professionally, also approaching a doubling since 2024.
Across all three segments, between 70 and 80 per cent of professionals report using AI to support their career development specifically, whether to complete tasks at a more senior level, to bridge internal skills gaps, or to pursue personalised career advice and job application support.
Organisations deploying AI and automation to address skills challenges are also common.
About45 per cent of transitional energy hiring managers and 48 per cent of renewables hiring managers report this as an active strategy.
The challenge, as Jayden Wallis, President ASPAC and Airswift Resourcing at Airswift, observes, is that many companies remain in a preparatory phase, putting data structures and governance in place rather than delivering the automations and integrations that will generate measurable change.
The gap between AI’s potential and its realised impact on skills development remains wide, and closing it will require deliberate, structured investment in people alongside technology.