A new £35m training academy and energy transition research laboratory has been announced by Centrica. Based in Lutterworth, Leicestershire, the facility is set to open in May next year and will enable thousands of British Gas engineers to learn about heat pumps, EV chargers, solar panels and battery storage.
The academy will feature a full size ‘eco house’ and will be home to a number of research laboratories, including a Net Zero Lab, for the testing of emerging technologies and a Hive Lab to support the development, testing and quality assurance of new and existing Hive Home products, including EV Chargers. There will also be a Centrica Business Solutions Controls Lab that will be used to develop and test controls systems for commercial and industrial energy and heating solutions.
Chris O’Shea, chief executive of Centrica, comments: “Creating the well paid, unionised jobs needed to drive the energy transition is one of the biggest tasks facing the energy industry today. Our state of the art facility in Lutterworth will set a new benchmark for industry training, providing our engineers with the skills and confidence to deliver the first-class service our customers rightly expect and with more engineers trained in green skills, our energy transition will be more achievable.
“We already have four award winning academies in Dartford, Hamilton, Leicester and Thatcham and since 2021, we’ve welcomed over 1,700 new apprentices. We’re committed to hiring a new apprentice for every day of this decade and our new academy will help us meet that ambition whilst also supporting the drive to diversify the UK’s engineering workforce, and our research labs will drive the innovation necessary to make sure we deliver a just transition which leaves no-one behind.”
