Energy is Still Checking Paperwork, and it is Costing Billions

Energy industry forms the backbone of the modern economy. It produces the fuel that moves people and goods, the plastics and materials behind everyday products, and the electricity that powers homes, businesses, and cities. It also manages some of the most complex, risk-critical operating environments in the world.

Over the past decade, organizations across these industries have made targeted, incremental investments to strengthen specific parts of their operating environment, improving safety processes, introducing predictive maintenance in limited contexts, deploying workforce management platforms, and expanding environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reporting.

But beneath all of them sits a more fundamental dependency: the ability to reliably confirm that the individual standing at the access point is qualified, credentialed, and authorized to perform the specific task in front of them. And while systems, assets, and processes have evolved, the identity layer that connects people to those systems has remained largely static.

This is an operational and strategic problem. There is one question that sits underneath everything in energy operations: who is on this site, what can they do, and are their credentials still valid? Getting that answer wrong doesn't just create paperwork, it creates risk, delays, and in the worst cases, fatalities. Yet in most organizations today, the answer is still buried in paper certificates, manual checks, and systems that don't talk to each other.

Each operator builds their own isolated profile of the same worker. When that worker moves to a new site or a new project, the cycle starts over, same credentials, same competencies, re-verified from scratch. It is nobody's fault. It is a structural problem. The consequences are sharpest where the stakes are highest: in Health, Safety, Security & Environment (HSSE) enforcement and workforce deployment.

The HSSE Gap That Procedures Alone Cannot Close

Every HSSE control ultimately comes down to the same thing. Making sure the right person is authorized to perform a specific task, in a specific location, under safe conditions. Permit to Work is the system that's supposed to guarantee this. It is not a routine work permit. It is a formal safety system used to manage high-risk, non-routine tasks, ensuring hazards are assessed and only properly authorized individuals are allowed to proceed.

In 2022, a contractor erecting scaffolding at a chemical plant in the UK entered a work area without the correct permits in place. Hazards had not been adequately assessed or communicated at the point of access. He fell into a trough of corrosive chemicals and later died from his injuries. Investigators found that insufficient attention had been given to risk at execution time, and the company was fined £1.125 million. In a separate UK case, a construction worker got electrocuted while working on a power line because the permit issued failed to address induction risk from an adjacent live circuit. In both cases, a permit had been issued. But in neither case did the permit adequately cover the actual hazards the worker faced. The chemical plant permit failed to assess the risks in the zone the contractor entered. The power line permit overlooked an adjacent live circuit. On paper, the process had been followed. In practice, the wrong permit was treated as the right one and no one caught it before someone got killed.

A 2017 study analyzing more than 600 industrial process safety accidents found that failures in Permit to Work systems directly contributed to those accidents and that the failure rate had not meaningfully improved over a 25-year period.

These incidents do not happen because organizations don't care about safety. They happen because safety controls at execution time rely on assumed identity, not verified identity.

The Talent Problem Has the Same Root Cause

The same identity gap that undermines HSSE enforcement also constrains workforce effectiveness. Manpower’s 2024 research found that 76% of Energy and Utilities employers report a talent and skills gap within their existing workforce. Accenture's 2026 Talent Reinventors research reinforces the scale of the challenge: only 18% of organizations have achieved the balance between AI adoption and a people-first workforce strategy suggesting that the systems, data, and processes needed to make workforce capability visible and verifiable remain immature across the vast majority of the industry. Across the industry, qualified workers are ready to deploy but they are routinely delayed or underutilized because their skills cannot be verified and trusted quickly enough. A worker with years of verified experience can look identical to an unqualified hire because credentials sit in disconnected systems that don't transfer across employers or sites.

That opacity creates risk as well as friction. In 2021, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in Alberta uncovered a largescale operation selling counterfeit H2S awareness, a mandatory safety certification for working around hydrogen sulfide, a deadly gas common during drilling. This is one of the most commonly required qualifications in energy. For roughly $500, workers could purchase forged credentials made to appear as if they had been issued by Energy Safety Canada or the Canadian Red Cross. Investigators cited pressure to mobilize workers quickly as the primary driver.

Manual verification was already struggling to keep pace. By 2025, Ontario authorities were reporting a surge in fraudulent certificates across industrial sectors, and the methods had evolved beyond simple forgery. Individuals were using AI tools to complete online safety training on their behalf, passing the tests and generating legitimate certificates from recognized providers. The certificate is real, the training provider is real, but the worker never learned the material. At that point, verifying the document is no longer enough. You must verify the person.

When identity and credentials cannot be verified continuously, organizations are forced to rely on workarounds, visual checks, duplicated validation, and manual approvals. Over time, those workarounds become structural risk. In high-hazard, contractor-heavy environments, neither speed without assurance nor assurance without speed is acceptable.

The operational cost is real. Accenture's 2025 capital projects research found that 64% of energy infrastructure projects miss their schedule commitments, and 59% exceed budget by more than 10%. While these overruns have multiple causes, workforce mobilization delays driven by credential re-verification, manual permit reissue, and fragmented onboarding — are a consistent contributor. Every day a qualified worker sits idle waiting for paperwork is a day of lost productivity on a project that is likely already behind schedule.

What Changes When Identity Becomes Infrastructure

The organizations moving ahead of this problem are treating identity not as an administrative process but as operational infrastructure – the control layer that sits beneath both safety and workforce systems.

Universal Wallet Infrastructure (UWI) is designed to provide this missing layer: a shared identity foundation that connects authorization, credentials, and access across the enterprise. UWI enables worker identity, certifications, site clearances, and permit authorizations to be issued as verifiable digital credentials held by the worker, presented at the point of access, and verified instantly against trusted sources. Credentials travel with workers across sites, operators, and projects. When something changes a qualification lapses, a permit is suspended, a contractor is reassigned, the update propagates in real time. Access decisions happen before entry, not after incidents. Every interaction creates an immutable, auditable record.

The gap between authorization and enforcement closes. The skills that already exist in the organization become legible and deployable without friction. Critical shutdowns and maintenance windows are staffed from verified capability, not from the hope that the paperwork is in order. In effect, the same identity foundation closes two longstanding gaps at once: it enforces HSSE controls at the point of action, and it makes workforce capability visible and deployable across the enterprise.

Where Identity Moves from Concept to Control

The starting point does not need to be a largescale transformation. The most effective implementations begin where identity friction is already visible where permits are being issued manually, where access is controlled by physical badges, or where contractor onboarding repeats validation work another operator has already completed.

UWI is designed to integrate at these execution points. It issues verifiable identity and credential records directly into existing workflows, without requiring organizations to replatform core HR, ERP, HSSE, or access control systems. Rather than replacing what is already operational, UWI adds an enforceable identity layer on top allowing authorization to be checked and enforced where the job is executed.

Starting with real users and live credentials means organizations see operational value immediately and build the evidence base they need to scale. From there, UWI extends across additional sites, operators, and partners using the same credentials, the same trust model, and the same verification logic without rebuilding anything. Every new deployment builds on the last, and because UWI is modular by design, the direction is clear from day one.

The Structural Advantage of Moving Now

The energy industry is heading into a decade of significant workforce pressure. Energy employers are forecast to hire 32 million people between 2025 and 2035. Accenture's 2025 capital projects research found that the energy sector faces an acute talent shortage in execution, driven by an aging workforce and fewer new professionals entering the industry with critical roles including planners, engineers, and project controllers becoming increasingly difficult to fill. Power sector organizations are managing accelerating grid complexity with workforces where over half have less than ten years of experience.

At the same time, regulators are moving toward continuous, verifiable compliance. The EU's Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, which entered into force in July 2024, now requires large companies to address human rights and environmental risks across their operations and supply chains, including workforce traceability. Organizations that build the infrastructure for real-time credential verification now will be ahead of where regulation is heading. Those that wait will be retrofitting under pressure.

There is also a competitive dimension. In a contractor-heavy industry, the operators who adopt portable, verified digital credentials first become the preferred destinations for the best workers. Qualified contractors will gravitate toward sites where their credentials are recognized instantly and their verified experience travels with them.

The financial case supports this. Accenture's Talent Reinventors research found that organizations who get talent strategy right saw revenue growth 1.8 percentage points higher and profit growth 1.4 percentage points higher than their peers.

Universal Wallet Infrastructure is not a future ambition. It is available now, designed to integrate into existing systems, and built to deliver value from the first deployment. For an industry that has spent decades managing risk on paper, the opportunity to move to verified trust at the point of execution is long overdue.

About Universal Wallet Infrastructure

Universal Wallet Infrastructure (UWI) is an enterprise-grade digital trust platform developed jointly by Accenture and NTT DOCOMO GLOBAL. Launched in January 2026, UWI provides the foundational services that allow organizations to issue, verify, and manage credentials across digital identity, assets, and documents — with seamless interoperability across enterprises, industries, and geographies. It is built on open standards and decentralized technology, meaning no single organization controls the data. Individuals hold their own verified credentials and share them on their terms.

To learn more, visit universalwalletinfra.com.

Sources:

1. PTW failure – contractor fatality (corrosive chemicals) and electrocution (power line) EcoOnline, "What is a Permit to Work System?", December 2024 – Read the source here.

2. PTW system failures – 2017 study, 600+ accidents, consistent root cause rate over 25 years Yan C. et al., "Contribution of Permit to Work to Process Safety Accident in the Chemical Process Industry", Chemical Engineering Transactions, Vol. 56, 2017 – Read the source here.

3. Alberta RCMP 2021 – large-scale counterfeit safety certificate operation, Canadian oil and gas Mintz Global Screening, "Distribution of Fake Safety Certificates Puts Public at Risk", 2021 – Read the source here.

4. Fake credentials for $500 – H2S, ground disturbance, first aid, Canadian oil and gas Canadian Occupational Safety / The Safety Mag, "Can You Spot the Fake Credentials?" – Read the source here.

5. Ontario 2025 – surge in fake training certificates, AI used to complete online safety modules Canadian Occupational Safety / The Safety Mag, "Surge in Fake Training Certificates Sparks Industry Alarm", October 2025 – Read the source here.

6. 76% of Energy & Utilities employers experiencing a talent and skills gap Manpower Group, Talent Shortage Survey, 2024 Cited in: Center for Energy Workforce Development (CEWD), Energy Workforce Fast Facts, 2024 – Read the source here.

7. Energy employers forecast to hire 32 million people between 2025 and 2035 Brookings Institution, 2024, cited in CEWD, Energy Workforce Fast Facts, 2024 – Read the source here.

8. Accenture, "Blueprint for Success: Energy Capital Projects," December 2025 — Read the source here.

9. Accenture, "Talent Reinventors: Delivering Value with and for People in the Age of AI," March 2026 — Read the source here.

10. EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), entered into force July 2024 – European Commission – Read the source here.