The Failure to Decarbonize the Global Energy Education System: Carbon Lock-in and Stranded Skill Sets

Abstract

The energy transition involves the transformation of professions and labour markets, which in turn depend on the availability of a workforce with the right education and competence. This study assesses how quickly global higher education is transitioning from fossil fuels to renewable energy in terms of educational content. The article is based on a review of 18,400 universities and the creation of a dataset of 6,142 universities that provide energy-specific education in 196 countries. The study compares the prevalence of educational programmes oriented towards fossil fuels and renewable energy. The findings show that the rapid adoption of renewable energy worldwide is not matched by changes in higher education, since universities continue to prioritise coal and petroleum studies. In 2019, 546 universities had faculties and/or degrees dedicated to fossil fuels whereas only 247 universities had faculties and/or degrees in renewable energy. As many as 68% of the world's energy-focused educational degrees were oriented towards fossil fuels, and only 32% focused on renewable energy. This means that universities are failing to meet the growing demand for a clean energy workforce. At the current rate of change, energy-focused university degrees would be 100% dedicated to renewable energy only by the year 2107. Since a career may last 30-40 years, this creates a risk of long-term carbon lock-in and stranded skill sets through (mis)education. The results also indicate that developing countries lag behind developed ones in this area, even though the need for professionals trained in renewable energy is greater in developing countries. Along with lack of capital, underdeveloped regulatory frameworks for renewable energy, and entrenched fossil-fuel business interests, the mismatch between energy education and the needs of the renewable energy industry may hold back the energy transition in many developing countries.

Full text

Energy Research & Social Science 110 (2024) 103446
Available online 14 February 2024
2214-6296/© 2024 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Original research article
The failure to decarbonize the global energy education system:
Carbon lock-in and stranded skill sets
Roman Vakulchuk
a
,
*
, Indra Overland
b
a
Climate and Energy Research Group, Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI), Oslo, Norway
b
Center for Energy Research, NUPI, Norway
ARTICLE INFO
Keywords:
Educational carbon lock-in
Stranded skill sets
Decarbonizing the university
Sustainability education
Energy transition
Renewable energy
Fossil fuels
Fossil fuel mindset
Higher education
Renewable energy careers
Human capital
ABSTRACT
The energy transition involves the transformation of professions and labour markets, which in turn depend on the
availability of a workforce with the right education and competence. This study assesses how quickly global
higher education is transitioning from fossil fuels to renewable energy in terms of educational content. The
article is based on a review of 18,400 universities and the creation of a dataset of 6,142 universities that provide
energy-specic education in 196 countries. The study compares the prevalence of educational programmes
oriented towards fossil fuels and renewable energy. The ndings show that the rapid adoption of renewable
energy worldwide is not matched by changes in higher education, since universities continue to prioritise coal
and petroleum studies. In 2019, 546 universities had faculties and/or degrees dedicated to fossil fuels whereas
only 247 universities had faculties and/or degrees in renewable energy. As many as 68% of the world’s energy-
focused educational degrees were oriented towards fossil fuels, and only 32% focused on renewable energy. This
means that universities are failing to meet the growing demand for a clean energy workforce. At the current rate
of change, energy-focused university degrees would be 100% dedicated to renewable energy only by the year
2107. Since a career may last 30-40 years, this creates a risk of long-term carbon lock-in and stranded skill sets
through (mis)education. The results also indicate that developing countries lag behind developed ones in this
area, even though the need for professionals trained in renewable energy is greater in developing countries.
Along with lack of capital, underdeveloped regulatory frameworks for renewable energy, and entrenched fossil-
fuel business interests, the mismatch between energy education and the needs of the renewable energy industry
may hold back the energy transition in many developing countries.
1. Introduction
The world has embarked on a large-scale transition to renewable
energy [1–4]. According to the International Energy Agency [5], there
has been more investment globally in renewables than in fossil fuels
every year since 2016. But if the the Paris Agreement targets are to be
fullled, it is necessary to further accelerate the decarbonisation and
transformation of energy systems, including even faster changes in the
social, economic and political domains [6,7].
The global energy education system will also need to change. Energy
education in the 20
th
century was centred on the needs of the fossil fuel
industries. Reorienting energy education away from fossil fuels and to-
wards renewables will be decisive for limiting global warming to 1.5◦C
by 2050 [8,9], since a large and well-qualied workforce will be vital for
the energy transition [10]. The transition requires a new generation of
scientists, engineers, technicians and other specialists with the skills
needed to build and manage renewable energy systems [11–13].
Renewable energy requires more labour than fossil fuels. The wind
power sector employs more people than the coal industry per GWh of
electricity produced; the solar energy sector already employs more
people than the oil and gas industries combined, and the biofuels sector
requires more staff than the coal and nuclear fuel industries combined
[12,14–16].
The global renewable energy industry employed around 8 million
people in 2016 and 11.5 million in 2019 [17,18]. According to one
analysis, if all electricity is generated from renewables in 2050, this will
create nearly 35 million new jobs worldwide [19]. Other estimates show
that a completely renewable electricity supply will generate 52 million
full-time jobs across 139 countries by 2050 [20]. During 2010–2023,
there was a growing shortage of skilled labour for renewable energy
* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: rva@nupi.no (R. Vakulchuk).
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
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https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2024.103446
Received 31 July 2023; Received in revised form 21 January 2024; Accepted 23 January 2024

Energy Research & Social Science 110 (2024) 103446
2
systems throughout the world, and even more severe shortages are
predicted for the future [19,21]. These estimates diverge because of
different input data and assumptions, yet they all show the same general
trend: with expanding renewable energy generation, the world will need
a large workforce dedicated to renewables.
The overarching research question that this study addresses is
therefore: Are universities transitioning from fossil fuel to clean energy
education? In addition, we discuss the factors that are holding back the
transition.
The article has four main parts. First, we present the analytical
framework and our contribution to the existing literature on renewable
energy education. Next we present the empirical results, followed by a
discussion, recommendations and a concluding section with some ca-
veats about the study’s limitations.
2. Analytical framework
We draw on Unruh’s [22] concept of carbon lock-in, which refers to
the self-reinforcing inertia of the fossil fuel-based energy system through
structural path dependence. This prevents the introduction of alterna-
tive energy technologies despite their environmental and economic
advantages. According to Unruh [22], ‘industrial economies have been
locked into fossil fuel-based energy systems through a process of tech-
nological and institutional co-evolution driven by path-dependent
increasing returns to scale’.
Numerous studies have dealt with carbon lock-in effects in different
areas and at different levels. Table 1 presents a typology of the forms of
non-material carbon lock-in. However, no research has examined the
presence of carbon lock-in in the global energy education system in
terms of educational content.
Energy education deserves attention in a carbon lock-in perspective
for at least four reasons. First, it has an impact on the techno-
institutional complex by producing the workforce necessary to main-
tain the dominant fossil fuel-based system and further support it via
multiple channels. Thus, the energy education system is an important
part of what Unruh [22] referred to as the ‘fossil fuel-based techno-
institutional complex’. Second, energy education can be viewed as a
complex in its own right, with features similar to larger fossil fuel-based
systems: it educates millions of graduates every year who are employed
by the fossil fuel industry and sets standards via accreditation and
disciplinary and degree classication. Third, energy education feeds into
and receives input from other domains of the fossil fuel techno-
institutional complex. While Unruh [22] recognises education as an
important part of the complex, no study has examined carbon lock-in in
energy education globally in terms of educational content. Fourth,
universities are important because they are commonly viewed as agents
of change in the global energy system [38–41].
3. The existing literature and our contribution to it
We reviewed 92 academic publications on renewable energy edu-
cation published between 1990 and 2023. Already in the late 1990s and
early 2000s, various authors noted that the deployment of renewables
would be difcult unless a large workforce was trained in the manage-
ment, installation, operation and maintenance of renewable energy
systems [8,42]. Similarly, the importance of educating non-technical
professionals such as administrators and economists was emphasised
[43].
Existing research on renewable energy education has been focused
on issues related to course and curriculum development, teaching
methods, training materials, and university accreditation [8,13,44–58].
One of the major topics stressed by the scholars concerns the integration
of renewable energy disciplines into educational degrees, both at un-
dergraduate and graduate levels. Hasnain et al. [59] show that, in the
1990s, solar energy education was mainly available at the course level,
not at the degree level. A survey of graduate solar energy degree pro-
grammes in developed countries showed that only three universities
offered a master’s degree in solar energy in 1997 [59]. Until the early
2000s, renewables were not recognised ‘as a major component of the
“energy” subject’ [43], and the discipline lacked ‘uniformity in approach
and extent of specialisation of the graduates’ [60]. Moreover, at that
time, there was no international accreditation system for educational
programmes in renewable energy [60]. Another group of scholars has
emphasised the weak link between renewable energy education and the
job market [8]. Many scholars have stressed that advancing this edu-
cation is imperative as part of broader climate change mitigation mea-
sures [58,60], and some have noted that universities should become
change agents in the global energy transition [61].
It was only after 2009 that renewable energy education established
itself as a separate discipline within the framework of broader energy
education, and this was largely limited to Europe and North America.
Various scholars have studied the evolution of curricula, as well as
teaching methods, course development, training needs, awareness
raising and education of the broader public and decision-makers
[62–91]. Scholars have also emphasised the importance of introducing
more practical and digitally-based exercises and knowledge for univer-
sity students on wind and solar power technologies [92–95].
A group of scholars has proposed enabling factors for advancing
renewable energy education [96–98], while others have stressed the
importance of quality education for the energy transition [99]. Studies
increasingly have focused on the major barriers to integrating renewable
energy education programmes into academic programmes [100,101].
According to Ciriminna et al. [100], for example, technical solar edu-
cation should be merged with broader management and economic
education.
Critical skills and workforce decits and a mismatch between the
available education and the industry demand for qualied workers have
been identied as major barriers to the rapid deployment of renewables
around the world [10,21,102,103]. Maier et al. [104] nd a disconnect
between universities and the renewable energy business sector in
Europe, with only 73 universities offering master's degrees that include
internships at renewable energy companies. This points to a lack of
sufcient skills and implies a signicant shortage of practical knowledge
among graduates placed in companies for internships during or after
their education. Furthermore, Tsoutsos et al. [105] found that 8 out of
10 photovoltaics market players have limited or no access to relevant
technical training and education in Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Greece,
Romania and Spain.
The existing literature converges on three accounts. First, in an
attempt to satisfy the growing demand for renewables specialists after
2000, many universities simply added one or two courses on renewable
energy to their traditional science and engineering degree programmes
(e.g. [58]). However, this reportedly failed to produce graduates with
sufcient skills and knowledge [13,58]. For instance, in India,
Montenegro, Serbia and Turkey, scholars found that there was no degree
programme in renewable energy after 2000; instead, one or two courses
were added to the curriculum of general engineering degree pro-
grammes, resulting in limited preparedness of graduates to work in the
renewable energy sector [8,106,107].
Second, the situation in renewable energy education is worse in
developing countries than in the developed world because of under-
nancing and a lack of skilled educators, institutional infrastructure and
Table 1
Sources of non-material carbon lock-in.
Type Literature
Formal institutions (policies, rules, commitments) [22–27]
Informal institutions (cognitive frames, norms, narratives) [24–26,28–30]
Competencies, behaviour [24–26,31–33]
Micro-economic factors [32,34–36]
Source: Trencher et al. [37].
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Energy Research & Social Science 110 (2024) 103446
3
curricula. Energy engineers and technicians from developing countries
therefore often need to go abroad to acquire a complete renewable en-
ergy education. At the same time, as energy demand is projected to grow
faster in developing countries, the need for renewable energy education
and a qualied workforce will be greater there than in developed
countries.
Third, since the middle of the 1990s, scholars have pointed out that
the global education system is failing to keep up with the needs of the
renewable energy industry. Hasnain et al. [59] note that, while solar
energy technologies have been rapidly developed, little attention has
been paid to solar energy education. In Jordan, for example, the weak
educational system and the shortage of qualied engineers and techni-
cians specialised in renewable energy is a major obstacle [75,102,108].
In China and Southeast Asia, scholars point to a severe shortage of
qualied specialists and a mismatch between renewable energy educa-
tion and the needs of industry and advocate adopting comprehensive
renewable energy curricula at universities [67,109].
Some authors have analysed the carbon emissions footprint of uni-
versities themselves. For example, Leal Filho et al. [110] surveyed 50
universities from different countries to establish whether they used
renewable energy at their facilities and found that the majority still
relied heavily on fossil fuels. Worsham and Brecha [111] examined the
commitments universities have made about their own emissions. How-
ever, such studies did not look at universities’ educational content, the
effects of which are likely to be greater than their own emissions, since
the knowledge and skill sets students gain can spread and form whole
societies and industrial systems.
The ongoing energy transition highlights the importance of renew-
able energy education [112,113]. However, the world still faces a
shortage of qualied engineers and technical and renewable energy
policy specialists [18]. A branch of the literature discusses how skills can
be transferred between the fossil fuel and renewable sectors and argues
that workers can switch from one sector to another and that many
people who work in the energy sector have a generic (e.g. economics,
business, physics) education which could be used both in the fossil fuel
and renewables sectors [114]. Several scholars examined the career
pathways of energy managers in Norway and established that some of
them decide to leave fossil fuel companies in order work in the renew-
able energy sector (see e.g. Rauter [115]). The transferability of staff and
skill sets, however, may apply to some general and managerial skills,
whereas the skills needed for more technical professions tend to be in-
dustry specic. Bryant and Olson [116] note that it is highly problematic
to staff clean-energy industries with petroleum engineering graduates
since clean-energy engineering requires skills and technical knowledge
that are different from petroleum engineering. The shortage of skilled
labour in the renewable energy industry is one of the major barriers to
the rapid transition to alternative sources of energy [7,10].
It is also important to mention the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic
on the state of higher education in renewable energy. Many authors
show that the pandemic and the related shift to online teaching
complicated and slowed the effective provision of renewable energy
education [117]. Moreover, the pandemic widened the gap in energy
education between renewable energy and fossil fuels since the former
more often lack resources to invest in effective digital teaching solutions.
Our study makes several novel contributions to the literature. First, in
terms of methodology, most of the existing publications are based on a case-
study research design in which one or a few educational institutions in one
or a few countries are examined [47,55,64,67,84,107,109,112,118]. These
studies provide rich and insightful empirical material on the micro-level
challenges and barriers to promoting renewable energy education in
different specic locations. No researchers, however, have attempted to
study and compare universities worldwide, as we do in this article. While
most existing studies examine three to ve universities, the present study
covers 6,142 universities. Second, our study is also original in that it com-
pares the evolution of renewable energy education with that of fossil fuels at
the global level over time in order to gauge the shifting balance.
4. Methods
4.1. Data sources and research design
This study is based on data mined from the International Handbook
of Universities published regularly by UNESCO and available from the
World Higher Education Database (WHED), which is maintained by the
International Association of Universities (IAU). The handbook does not
have perfect coverage, but is the most comprehensive and widely
recognized source of data on higher education worldwide. The hand-
book provides a unique and comprehensive compilation of detailed
university data from nearly all countries in the world and has been used
in studies across a variety of disciplines [119–121]. Each year’s hand-
book typically comprises over 2000 large-format pages with very small
print.
The data were extracted and analysed for three temporal data points:
1999, 2009 and 2019. The 2019 issue is the most recent edition of the
handbook. Apart from the 2019 edition, the handbooks are only avail-
able in print. Therefore, we had to obtain data from the two other edi-
tions by manually scanning 4,730 pages (2,838,500 words) and
subjecting these to optical character recognition with 99.9% accuracy.
The text was then searched using keywords to identify energy-related
educational elements at 18,400 institutions of higher education in 196
countries at three levels: the university, faculty and degree programmes.
The analysis enabled us to identify 6,142 universities that offer ed-
ucation specialized in energy. These educational programmes were
analysed to ascertain whether they were oriented towards fossil fuels or
renewable energy. The data enabled us to ascertain the pace at which
educational programmes in renewable energy have grown and whether
they have been outpacing those dedicated to fossil fuels over time. Our
analysis covers only education that is specically about energy, not
general degrees in engineering, geology, economics, chemistry, admin-
istration, business, political science or other general elds whose grad-
uates may also nd work in the energy sector.
4.2. Levels of analysis
We included three levels of analysis in our study (see Table 2). This
tripartite structure corresponds to the UNESCO system, in which the
highest level is the university, the second level is faculties (sometimes
referred to as departments or similar terms) and the third level is degree
programmes. The three-level hierarchical structure also has an analyt-
ical function in our study. If a university establishes a whole renewable
Table 2
Levels of analysis
Levels Criteria Analytical signicance
1. University Renewable energy/fossil fuels in the ofcial name of the university (e.g. ‘Oil and Gas
University’).
The whole university focuses on fossil fuels or renewable
energy education (it is the main priority).
2. Faculty Faculties or equivalent, such as departments, divisions and centres (e.g. ‘Faculty of Renewable
Energy’).
The university emphasises fossil fuel or renewable energy
education (it is a major priority).
3. Degree
programme
Undergraduate degrees (bachelor’s, specialist), graduate (master’s) and post-graduate (PhD) in
fossil fuels or renewable energy; non-degree diplomas also included.
Renewable energy or fossil fuel education is available only at
the degree level (it is a minor priority).
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Energy Research & Social Science 110 (2024) 103446
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energy faculty, it likely signies that it will invest more in renewable
energy than a university that introduces only a single master’s degree
programme in that subject.
We used the same keyword search for each level of our analysis. For
example, at the highest level, if a university’s name included words such
as ‘oil’, ‘gas’ or ‘solar energy’, we categorised this university as being
dedicated to that type of energy.
4.3. Coding and data extraction
To ensure consistent data collection, educational entities specialising
in fossil fuels and renewable energy were identied through keyword
searches. We identied an initial set of 62 fossil fuel and renewable
energy keywords based on the Eurostat glossaries for ‘fossil fuels’ and
‘renewable energy sources’ [122,123], as well as previous keyword se-
lections developed by Overland and Sovacool [124] and by UNESCO
[125–127]. We searched for these keywords in the handbooks and kept
only those which generated at least one hit. All the keywords with zero
hits were removed from the nal list. This rendered 11 fossil-fuel and ten
renewable-energy keywords in the nal list (see Fig. 1).
We grouped the keywords into three categories: (a) fossil fuel
related, (b) renewable energy related and (c) a neutral category (e.g.
general programmes in electrical engineering). When we found one of
these neutral terms in the text, we checked the context of the hit and
qualitatively determined whether to assign the hit to fossil fuels or
renewable energy.
1
4.4. Content analysis and descriptive statistics
To ensure the reliability of our approach, we carried out both pilot
content analysis and researcher triangulation. Both methods helped
rene, nuance and improve the categorisation of educational units.
We applied the same strategy when analysing and quantifying in-
formation about our units of analysis at all levels (universities, faculties
and degree programmes). Each university was examined using all
keywords at all three levels. For example, if a university had a faculty of
renewable energy, this was counted as one unit at the faculty level.
Similarly, if a university had four different masters’ degrees in oil and
gas studies, these were counted as four units at the degree level.
5. Empirical results
5.1. Level 1: Whole universities
We identied universities that are dedicated to either fossil fuels or
renewable energy. For instance, the large Gubkin Russian State Uni-
versity of Oil and Gas was founded in 1930 and is one of the main
providers of fossil fuel education in Russia. Other examples include the
Petronas Malaysian University of Technology and the University of Pe-
troleum and Energy Studies in Dehradun, India. Such universities were
established to serve the needs of the oil and gas sector.
Fig. 2 shows the number of universities dedicated entirely to fossil
fuels or renewable energy. The gap between fossil fuel and renewable
energy universities is large and widening in favour of fossil fuels. By the
end of 2019, there were 33 universities specialising in petroleum
studies. By contrast, only two universities in the world focused on
renewable energy.
5.2. Level 2: University faculties
Often a university has more than one faculty dedicated to either fossil
fuels or renewable energy. For instance, the same university can have a
faculty of wind energy and a faculty of renewable energy law. The total
number of faculties in our count is therefore greater than the total
number of universities. If a university has no renewable energy faculty
but only a degree programme, it typically means that less human and
nancial resources are allotted to the eld. Fig. 3 tracks and compares
the change in the share of energy faculties dedicated to renewables and
fossil fuels between 1999 and 2019. Although the share of fossil fuel
faculties decreased over time (to 68%), it remained much larger than
that of renewables (32%) in 2019. In terms of absolute numbers, 546
universities had a total of 861 faculties dedicated to fossil fuels, while
247 universities had 543 faculties dedicated to renewable energy by
2020.
The dominance of fossil fuel faculties implies that education in fossil
fuels is much more developed than education in renewable energy.
Many universities offer a variety of specialised elds across a wide range
Fig. 1. Keyword groups
1
We also identied faculties and university degrees dedicated to nuclear
energy. Nuclear energy is a thorny issue, however, and views on it are divided
among the energy transition community. We therefore left it out of our analysis.
We plan to publish a separate article that would specically focus on nuclear
energy education and implications for the energy transition.
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Energy Research & Social Science 110 (2024) 103446
5
of topics related to fossil fuels. For instance, universities focusing on
fossil fuels typically have the following faculties or sub-faculties: oil and
gas exploration, drilling, geology, petroleum engineering, and oil and
gas markets. In contrast, most universities offering education in
renewable energy have fewer specialisations and often have only one or
several faculties or smaller sub-faculties.
Fig. 3 includes a projection indicating the year in which the global
share of renewable energy faculties will reach 100% based on the rate of
change between 1999 and 2019. At the current average rate, complete
change will not be achieved until 2083, which is incompatible with
climate change mitigation goals under the Paris Agreement.
5.3. Level 3: Degree programmes
Here we look at bachelor’s, master’s, PhD, and diploma degrees in
renewable energy or fossil fuels. If a university offers a master’s degree
in renewable energy but has no faculty or sub-faculty in renewables, this
indicates that renewable energy education is likely not a top priority,
and limited human and nancial resources are allocated to supporting
the programme. According to the existing literature, this is a common
issue worldwide. Some universities swiftly establish bachelor’s or
master’s programmes in renewable energy in an attempt to follow the
trend but do not carry out deeper structural changes, such as creating
faculties or sub-faculties [38,102]. Often such programmes lack skilled
and experienced staff, so that renewable energy subjects are taught by
professionals with a fossil fuel or general engineering backgrounds.
Shifting from fossil fuel to renewable energy education is not
straightforward. Renewable energy education is highly multi-
disciplinary and thus requires a different approach from that of fossil
fuel education [43]. According to Jaber et al. [102], renewable energy
education ‘should include a study of conversion processes, technologies,
resources, systems design, economics, environmental dimensions, in-
dustry structure and policies in an integrated package’.
Fig. 4 presents the global share of educational degrees (bachelor’s,
master’s, PhDs, and diplomas) in renewable energy and fossil fuels.
Despite growth in the share of renewable-focused energy degrees glob-
ally from 17% in 1999 to 32% in 2019, the share of fossil fuel degrees
offered was still much larger in 2019, at 68%. In terms of absolute
numbers, by 2020 a total of 546 universities (out of a total of 18,400)
offered 1372 fossil fuel degrees, while 247 universities offered 653
renewable energy degrees. The number of degrees in renewable energy
grew signicantly, from a total of 95 in 2009 to 653 in 2019. However,
Fig. 2. Entire universities specialising in fossil fuels and renewable energy
Fig. 3. Shares of faculties dedicated to renewable energy and fossil fuels. The dotted green line represents a simplied projection of when the share of renewable
energy faculties would reach 100% if the average rate of change from 1999 to 2019 were to continue.
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this number is still much smaller than the 1372 degrees in fossil fuels
offered to students globally. The shift from fossil fuel to renewable en-
ergy degrees was slower than that of faculty departments, and at the
current average rate, a complete shift will not be achieved until 2107.
5.4. Comparison of regions
Fig. 5 presents the geographical distribution of shares of degrees in
fossil fuels offered vs shares of degrees in renewable energy offered. In
most parts of the world, renewable energy education still lags behind
fossil fuel education, and the overall share of energy degree programmes
for fossil fuels is still substantially larger than that for renewable energy.
Asia Pacic, North America and Europe have come farthest in the
educational energy transition in this respect. There is a notable gap
between these regions and those of Africa, the Middle East, Central and
South America, and Eurasia, where the share of degrees in fossil fuels is
considerably larger.
Large countries that serve as global educational hubs, such as the
USA, had a limited number of renewable energy programmes during this
period. Country-specic case studies by other scholars support our
ndings. For example, Swift et al. [21] estimated that the USA will need
more than 50,000 university-educated professionals with graduate de-
grees by 2030 to support wind sector development and that the current
US education system falls considerably short of meeting this demand.
Our results also indicate that developing countries lag behind
developed countries in terms of renewable energy education. Along with
lack of capital, underdeveloped regulatory frameworks for renewable
energy and entrenched fossil fuel business interests, this may encumber
the energy transition in many developing countries.
5.5. Private and public universities
Fig. 6 compares public and private universities. The global share of
renewable energy degree programmes at public universities rose from
16% in 1999 to 34% in 2019 and was lower than that of private uni-
versities, which saw an increase from 21% in 1999 to 39% in 2019.
Thus, private universities have been slightly more active than public
universities in shifting to renewable energy education. This may be
because private universities are less prone to carbon lock-in effects (see
Discussion section for more detail on carbon lock-in).
6. Discussion
Universities still focus on and produce more graduates for the fossil
fuel industries than for the global renewable energy sector. This result is
consistent with the concept of carbon lock-in, which has received
increasing attention in the academic literature. Carbon lock-in could
provide at least part of the explanation for the slow pace of the energy
transition in higher education (see Section 2). It can occur at multiple
levels (see Fig. 7). First, the global higher energy education system may
be slow to reform because of the entrenched interests of the fossil-fuel
industries, which have political and nancial inuence on higher edu-
cation. For example, oil companies often help fund educational pro-
grammes in petroleum studies. There have also been many instances in
Fig. 4. Global share of degree programmes in renewable energy and fossil fuels. The dotted green line indicates a simplied projection of when the share of uni-
versity degrees in renewable energy would reach 100% if the average rate of change from 1999 to 2019 were to continue.
Fig. 5. Evolving share of degrees in renewable energy and fossil fuels by region
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Energy Research & Social Science 110 (2024) 103446
7
which senior oil company staff have become university board members
[41]. In the US, many universities ‘retain links with the fossil-fuel in-
dustry in a variety of ways, despite the growing pressure on them to cut
them’ [128]. According to the study by Data for Progress [129], six fossil
fuel companies in the US have provided more than USD 700 million to
27 universities – including the University of California at Berkeley, the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the George Mason University –
from 2010 to 2020. In the view of Claire Kaufman, an organizer at the
Divest Princeton group, the oil industry is ‘not a neutral industry. It has
an agenda, it wants to shape the conversation around climate change
and energy’ [128]. The graduates who obtain a fossil fuel education may
return to their universities many years later and sponsor fossil fuel de-
gree programmes.
Second, another source of carbon lock-in is government funding for
education. In 2019, the governments of 196 countries spent on average
3.6% of their GDP on education, and a disproportionate part of this was
spent on fossil fuel education [130]. These allocations are made by ed-
ucation ministries, energy ministries, public research funding bodies,
and private and international donors who support educational in-
stitutions and often shape their academic agendas and curricula directly
or indirectly. At the same time, renewable energy education remains
undernanced. Thus, educational reform may be needed not only at the
university level but also at the level of the state, which could help pri-
oritise renewable energy education by phasing out nancing for fossil
fuel programmes. At the same time, more research is needed to examine
the variety of funding sources and the institutional structure of carbon
lock-in within higher education in different countries.
Third, university accreditation systems and the codied educational
standards of UNESCO and other organizations may also contribute to a
carbon lock-in effect. For example, in the UNESCO classication system
for educational disciplines, wind energy is not categorized as a discipline
in its own right and is instead subsumed under energy engineering. By
contrast, petroleum and coal are treated as separate disciplines and thus
have a more prominent place in the UNESCO classication system. This
issue requires further research to establish how and to what extent
accreditation systems and codied educational standards contribute to
Fig. 6. Share of degree programmes in public and private universities over time (in %)
Fig. 7. The structure of carbon lock-in in higher education
R. Vakulchuk and I. Overland

Energy Research & Social Science 110 (2024) 103446
8
carbon lock-in in higher education in different countries.
Fourth, people with a fossil fuel education may have fossil fuel
mindsets for the rest of their careers. University education shapes peo-
ple’s beliefs, values, attitudes and actions. People with fossil fuel edu-
cations are more likely to be supportive of fossil fuel agendas, discourses
and actions. Such education can also plant the seeds of a carbon lock-in
mentality both via personal networks and within formal institutions.
This may lead to fossil fuel graduates being left with stranded skill sets
and a heightened risk of unemployment, and the cost of retraining them
may be substantial. Therefore, universities could consider shutting down
fossil fuels educational programmes and reorienting their resources to-
wards giving students the skills for which demand is actually rising in
the labour market.
7. Conclusion
From 2010 to 2024, there was a growing global shortage of skilled
labour for renewable energy systems, and more severe shortages are
predicted in the future [19,21]. If left unaddressed, the structural
problem in the global energy education system may have a detrimental
impact on the energy transition. The continued prioritisation of fossil
fuel education by universities is likely to complicate the implementation
of the Paris Agreement and the achievement of carbon neutrality, since
the qualications and skill sets of the workforce will be mismatched with
the needs of the energy sector.
In this study, we rstly established that universities in developed and
developing economies alike struggle to phase out fossil fuel education
and to prioritize renewable energy education. We found that, although
the availability of educational programmes on renewables has grown
over the years, they are still outnumbered by fossil fuel-oriented
programmes.
Second, we proposed that this may be due to the presence of carbon
lock-in in institutions of higher education and the continued support and
nancing that universities receive from the fossil-fuel industry. To tackle
carbon lock-in in higher education, it may need to be addressed at
several levels. This topic, however, needs more research to establish the
variety and types of carbon lock-in sources in different parts of the
world. In particular, the impact of codication measures such as
accreditation warrants further study.
The study is accompanied by four caveats. First, our data cover
universities only, not organisations providing vocational programmes
and on-the-job training. The latter also play an important role in pre-
paring people to work in the energy sector [71] and could be the subject
of another study. Creating new degree programs at university-level is
often a slow process due to multiple levels of governance and quality
control that can involve time-consuming and bureaucratic procedures.
Smaller and nimbler technical and vocational education and training
(VET) institutions may be less prone to carbon lock-in effects than uni-
versities and could thus play an important role in the acceleration of the
energy transition in education. However, university-level qualications
clearly will also be needed for the energy transition, and on the current
educational trajectory these are a missing link.
Second, after rst surveying 18,400 universities, we focused on those
that provide education specically oriented towards fossil fuels or re-
newables and compared them to each other. This means that we did not
look closely at universities that provide energy education that is not
focused on renewables or fossil fuels, or that is not focused on energy at
all but whose graduates go on to work in the energy sector. Such general
educational programmes may have less of a fossil fuel bias. However,
extrapolating from our data on those educational programmes that do
have a clear prole, one might hypothesise that the generic programmes
are also more focused on fossil fuels than renewables, especially as many
of them have existed since the times when there was much less emphasis
on renewables. Checking this hypothesis would require substantial
further research on the contents of such educational programmes. In any
case, the growing shortage of skilled labour needed for renewable
energy systems indicates that the supply of talent from both specialized
and generic educational programmes is insufcient for the energy
transition. The supply of human capital is lagging greatly behind de-
mand in the renewable energy sector.
Third, our counts do not include the numbers of students educated by
different programs. In theory some programs could produce much larger
student numbers than others. However, such data would be difcult to
get hold of on the global scale that our analysis deals with. Since we
cover institutional structures at multiple levels, it is unlikely that there
are many more renewable energy students produced than our ndings
indicate. And if there is a systematic difference in size, it is more likely
the older and more established fossil fuel programmes, which often have
large-scale sponsorship from oil companies, that are largest. That would
mean that the imbalance in favour of fossil fuels is even greater than we
have found. However, checking that would require further research.
Fourth, some skills can be transferred between the fossil fuel and
renewable sectors. For example, staff can switch from one sector to
another, some companies are currently investing in both sectors (e.g. oil
companies investing in wind or solar power), and many people who
work in the energy industry have generic educations which could be
used in either sector. Again, however, the reported growing shortages of
high- and medium-skilled labour for renewable energy systems signal
signicant supply gaps of professionals for this sector globally, risking
delays in the energy transition.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Roman Vakulchuk: Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal
analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Resources,
Software, Supervision, Validation, Visualization, Writing – original
draft, Writing – review & editing. Indra Overland: Conceptualization,
Data curation, Funding acquisition, Methodology, Resources, Supervi-
sion, Visualization, Writing – review & editing.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing nancial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to inuence
the work reported in this article.
Data availability
Data will be made available on request.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Aidai Isataeva and Galina Kolodzinskaia for
their helpful assistance and advice in connection with the data collection
for this article. This article was nanced by the Research Council of
Norway, project number 324628.
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