LONDON: The British Gas Green Skills Training Centre in South Wales was officially opened today by Carwyn Jones, First Minister of the Welsh Assembly Government.

The centre in Tredegar is a first for the UK and aims to train more than 1,300 people each year, including local long-term unemployed people. The Heads of the Valleys area has the lowest employment rate in Wales - 64 per cent, compared with 71 per cent nationally.

Developed in partnership with the Welsh Assembly Government, JobMatch, Jobcentre Plus, SummitSkills and Blaenau Gwent County Borough Council, the state-of-the-art centre will offer training and qualifications for would-be energy efficiency assessors and installers of new green technologies as well as providing opportunities for British Gas engineers to increase their skills.

Gearoid Lane, British Gas' managing director of Communities and New Energy, said: "This fantastic new facility is a blueprint for British Gas' wider ambition to be the hub around which communities benefit from upskilling, green living and improvements in household comfort and energy affordability."

He said British Gas was investing heavily in this rapidly growing sector through the creation of thousands of smart meter and insulation engineer jobs. But the company also wanted to help equip local people with the skills to deliver these emerging technologies in the communities where they live.

Carwyn Jones said: "The British Gas Green Skills Training Centre presents an excellent opportunity to support Wales' green energy potential. Earlier this year, we launched our Green Jobs Strategy for Wales, which aims to develop skilled jobs for local people and the centre will play an important role in helping to achieve this."

About the centre: The Green Skills Training Centre features fully functioning heating installations, energy efficient and microgeneration technologies housed in specially designed bungalows - from 'single brick' construction to timber-framed properties.

It aims to provide the best possible hands-on practice and experience, reflecting the challenges trainees could encounter as qualified energy assessors or installation engineers.

Among the rapidly growing green technologies on show at the centre are smart gas and electricity meters, solar thermal panels, solar photovoltaic panels that generate hot water and electricity, combined heat and power boilers that use waste heat to generate power, and ground-source heat pumps.