The renewables industry is the most important of our generation.
The people working in it are building the infrastructure that’s decarbonising economies, reshaping power systems, and answering one of the defining questions of the century.
So how do they actually feel about the work?
Are they energised or exhausted? Proud or pressured? Confident the industry is heading in the right direction, or quietly worried it isn’t? Do they feel valued by their employers, supported by their leaders, motivated by the mission?
Until now, no one has really asked. There’s no shortage of salary surveys, LinkedIn polls, or “state of the industry” reports counting investment, output and progress. But almost nothing that takes the temperature of the people behind the numbers: the engineers, developers, project managers, technicians, commercial leads and consultants whose decisions, day in and day out, determine whether projects get built.
That’s the gap the Good Energy Index is here to fill.
What is the Good Energy Index?
We’re surveying the industry to create the Good Energy Index: the first global, annual study of the renewables workforce. Working with our global research partners, we’re measuring how energised, supported, confident, motivated, valued and proud renewables professionals feel about their work – and what’s driving those feelings.
We’ll be looking at job satisfaction, workplace culture, leadership, career growth, work-life balance, compensation, and the factors influencing whether people stay or leave. And we’ll be applying serious statistical analysis to understand what actually moves the needle on retention and engagement, beyond the headlines.
The output is a Good Energy Score for the industry: a single, comparable measure of how the renewables workforce is feeling, that we’ll publish this year and every year after.
Why measuring Good Energy matters
The energy transition is, fundamentally, a people problem. We have the technology, the capital, and –in some markets – the political conditions. The bottleneck is people: finding them, keeping them, and getting them into the right roles fast enough to meet the build-out the world needs.
You can’t solve a people problem without understanding people. And you can’t understand people without asking them, We aim to do that properly, at scale, and over time.
That’s why we’re planning the Good Energy Index as an annual study. A one-off snapshot tells you what’s happening today. A tracker tells you what’s changing, what’s improving, what’s getting worse, and what the industry needs to do about it. We want to be able to answer the big questions, like: is good energy rising or falling across the industry? Which segments are pulling ahead and which are falling behind? What’s working, what isn’t, and where do employers most urgently need to focus?
Why we’re doing it
Taylor Hopkinson has been recruiting in renewables, and only renewables, since 2009. Sixteen years of conversations with the people building this industry has given us a particular vantage point – and a sense of duty.
We talk to thousands of renewables professionals every year. We hear what’s on their minds, what they’re proud of, what frustrates them, what makes them want to stay or move. We’ve always believed that the people behind the energy transition deserve more attention than they get. That’s why we launched our Alternative Currents series recently – to focus on the human stories behind the figures.
The Good Energy Index is our attempt to turn those conversations into data the whole industry can use. Not as proprietary intelligence we keep to ourselves — as a public benchmark, freely shared, designed to make the industry a better place to work.
Because good energy starts with good people. And the more we understand how those people are really doing, the better the energy transition will be for everyone.
Take part in the first Good Energy Index
Our survey is open now. It takes around ten minutes, all responses are confidential, and every participant gets first access to the report when it publishes later this year. Thanks in advance for helping us
