The Spanish-owned company said it plans to spend £3bn over the next decade hooking up  5GW of renewable energy schemes and carrying out extensive upgrades to the electricity grid links between England and Scotland.

The planned spend is subject to approval by Ofgem, which has now received submissions for the next price control period from all transmission companies.

Scottish Power also said it planned an apprentices recruitment drive as well as retraining under 25s into highly skilled jobs.

This will include supporting contractors and companies in the wider supply chain to do likewise.

Four out of five energy industry employees are set to retire over the next 15 years.

Included within the submission are several  major projects, including increasing the transmission capacity between Scotland and England to at least 6.6GW. This would allow the transfer of nearly three times more electricity than is currently possible.

Frank Mitchell, CEO of ScottishPower Energy Networks, said: “Massive investment is required to ensure that Scotlandís electricity network is fit for purpose for the 21st century.

“It is important that we have a modern and robust network to support our renewable energy ambitions and to provide reliability for those who generate electricity and the homes and businesses who rely on this electricity.

“It is no secret that our industry has an ageing workforce, and we need to encourage new blood in to the fold.

“We envisage bringing on up to 200 new graduate engineers and key apprentices in the next four years, up to 1000 new highly skilled roles required across ScottishPower by 2020.

He added: “As well as boosting our own staff intake, we will also be sitting down with contractors and suppliers to outline what we will need over the next decade to deliver this work, and to encourage them to invest in a new generation of workers as well.”

ScottishPower will also invest heavily in upgrading nearly a fifth of its substation equipment and replace or refurbish approximately 800 circuit km of overhead line.