The industry is rising to multiple challenges: the Covid 19 pandemic and its aftermath have magnified retirements, lower immigration, and delays in new graduates entering the workforce. Attracting, retaining, and developing talent in the energy industry continues to be a challenge at a time when the industry is facing a significant transformation.

The Australian Pipelines and Gas Association (APGA) has foreseen some of the impending challenges and has proactively developed the Pipeline Engineer Competency System (PECS) to aid succession planning. The system has crossed international boundaries with adaptation, resulting in the Canadian Pipeline Competency System (CPCS). The system provides a way to understand, assess, document, and develop competency for technical staff (e.g., engineers). However, the energy industry is facing another challenge: combating climate change by incorporating more sustainable practices.

“Sustainability” requires a paradigm shift and needs to be woven into every facet of the day-to-day . There is an urgent need to build this “sustainability” competence in the existing engineering and technical workforce. Industry research on new technologies will underpin the definition and development of the required technical competencies. In academia, significant research and education efforts are underway to understand and define the competencies required for sustainability, which involves complex problem-solving. However, adoption of these competencies has yet to mature, and technical practitioners are often left to work with outdated tools.

This paper builds upon an extensive systematic literature review (Redman et al., 2021) to provide a roadmap for extending the existing competency management system so that it can be used to strategically manage talent, readying the energy industry to support, and adapt to, a responsible energy and clean fuels transition. The goal of this paper is to provide a new perspective on one of the key ingredients needed for the energy sector to reach net zero: building sustainability competence.