Must love heights and live wires: How Canada is building a workforce for the energy transition – National Observer
December 12, 2024
Shane Mullins cranks his neck backwards to see the top of the wind turbine he’s about to climb – a tower specifically for training. While it’s not as tall as the structures that run beside roads and stand parallel in fields, it’s inarguably high. It hits the same altitude as a 10-storey building, about half the height of the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
Along with his classmates, Mullins takes turns scaling the turbine, but he’s not scared. This kind of adrenaline rush is just his thing — he likes “climbing stuff” — and his last job was at a gravestone factory, a “morbid job,” he explains. He is not easily frightened.
Mullins sees his training as a wind technician as a move that aligns with his ethics, interests and hopes for a secure future.
