In the last few years, Queensland has seen capital investment in the state ramp up significantly, with a number of coal seam gas and coal projects getting the green light for development.

Energy Skills Queensland chief executive Glenn Porter told the Queensland Gas Conference on Wednesday $173.5 billion was invested in energy projects around the state while in the last six months, investment jumped 31% alone.

This jump could be attributed to three coal seam gas to LNG projects - Queensland Curtis LNG, Gladstone LNG and Australian Pacific LNG - making final investment decisions and investing around $45 billion.

Porter said the increase in capital investment was "creating a massive demand for skilled workers".

"We are really entering probably the largest energy resources boom that this country has ever seen," he said.

"This will create a significant demand for skilled workers."

Skill shortages have been identified in the traditional trades including electricians, technicians and mechanical diesel fitters while there will also be a shortage in professional roles including engineers and geologists.

Porter told the conference the skills were usually developed through apprenticeships however since the GFC there had been a significant decline in the number of people taking up apprenticeships.

In 2008, there were 15,000 apprentices in the utilities, engineering and constructions sectors however last year, that number dropped to around 11,000.

"The worrying thing is, this trend is continuing to decline," Porter said.

"What this means is that in two, three, four years time, there will be significantly less new apprentices completing their apprenticeship and entering the economy as qualified tradespeople.

"This [will] occur around the same period as we experience peak demand for these types of trades in 2013/2014.

"So we've got reduced supply, we got increased demand and we've got a bigger gap between demand and supply occurring, which will impact upon shortages and [the] ability of some of the sectors to achieve what they need to achieve."

Along with a shortage in traditional trades, Porter said there would also be a shortage in engineers. In the 2008/2009 financial year, only 6000 students graduated as engineers while the country had to import 9000 from overseas.

"We still bring in a lot more engineers offshore than we train in this country and this is something that is very wrong with our education training system.

"We really need to turn this around; this is a critical issue for Australia's future."

Queensland Minerals and Energy Academy Roger Atkins told the conference companies needed to engage and work with schools to generate the future workforce.

"We need to do a lot better in aligning what we do in our schools to what industry needs," he said.

"Historically in our country schools and industry have never met; we've never sat down and talked. We do teach our students maths [but] often it's not the maths you guys in the industry need.

"If you go into schools in Germany and France, you go in their manual arts sections you will find industry-standard equipment provided by industry with the teachers being provided by industry. This is why they make Mercedes and we make Holdens."

Atkins said the academy had received $300,000 from Energy Skills Queensland to investigate how it could work with industry to get students to study maths and sciences.

While the academy was working on attracting students to study courses required to enter the industry, Energy Skills Queensland was managing an $18 million fund provided by the state government to train workers in specialist areas.

The organisation was also managing a CSG-LNG training fund set up by the LNG majors and working with Construction Skills Queensland to cross-train tradespeople to specialist roles.

"If we don't really concentrate on building the supply of skills to meet these shortages there will be significant impacts," Porter said.

Wage inflation, cost blowouts, construction bottlenecks and possible project delays will be some of the impacts felt by industry.

"It is really incumbent on all of us to plan for this growth but really to put strategies in place to build the supply of skills in these identified shortage areas. The sooner we do that, the better," Porter said.