In order to fight against climate change, the European Commission has planned to reduce Europe’s emission of greenhouse gases by 80% to 95% in 2050.
The environmental protection will lead every European country to use more and more renewable energies.
The renewable energies are characterized by their intermittence. They will consequently bring some needs for energy storage on the network, that will make the network management far more complex.
The solutions aren’t easy to find but for sure they will lead to interconnections between different energy networks:
Electricity
Gas
Heat
This transition, between current energy networks and the one needed tomorrow, will require new knowledge.
This is especially true for technicians who will need to be more versatile in their day to day activities. They will require to understand not only the problematics of one specific sector, but also see the whole picture. Current teaching courses across Europe are not constructed that way. The courses are generally separated (some dealing with electricity, others with gas production or treatment) dedicated to different students with no particular interactions. This leads to labour market problematics that can be already seen today. According to the study “Employment in the EU-28 by Member State and RES employment per population” published by the European Commission in July 2020, the renewables sector accounted for over 1.5 million jobs in 2018 in the EU.
Implementing the Paris Agreement, in full worldwide, which would limit global warming to 2°C by the end of the century, could create 18 million net additional jobs by 2030 due to changes in the production and use of energy.
The Consequence is that about 1.5 million highly skilled people must be trained every year in Europe.
In France for instance, according to a study from EDEC, ordered by the Energy strategic committee, it was demonstrated that 200 000 jobs should be created before 2030 in the electrical field.
However, the study clearly highlights that the technician job, and especially jobs related to maintenance and operation, are already very difficult to find.
These profiles are already quite rare and will be in even higher demand tomorrow. In the Netherlands the SER (Socio-economic council) stated in 2018 that there is already a shortage of around 20.000 technicians in the country.
The need to prepare these professionals, or by initial training or by vocational training is then viewed as a priority for universities of the energy field.
Thus, there is a clear need for more advanced training programs, handling the abovementioned topics, and targeting more specifically technician level students.
The GREEN TECH project aims at breaking down the barriers that exist today between individual energy system training courses in order to train more versatile technicians.
This broad knowledge and skill versatility are a key competence that industrials working in the energy field are requiring more and more on the labor market.
The GREEN TECH project will put together training modules specifically adapted to the technicians who will have to deal with this new energy mix.
The consortium will create six training units,
the first one, as an introduction describing the context and the multiple stakes,
3 units about the different energy sources and vectors and their specificities Solar Energy, Wind energy, Green gas,
and 2 modules describing the necessary connections between them created by the Network Management and storage and the different usages.
All modules will be co-created by two universities from different countries.
They will be composed of a theoretical part (10h) and a practical part (10h) . These modules will be tested by a group of students and teachers from each country involved in this project. Each module leader will “test” its module in its own university, for those who do not have the competency, module leaders will be invited to test their modules in 2 to 3 other universities as visiting teachers. This phase will also represent an opportunity for teacher’s mobility, reinforcing the links between the universities.
As a result of this project, these modules will be freely integrated in each university cursus and as a last step will be gathered to build a MOOC largely opened to initial or vocational training.
As the context of Energy transition is still moving and specific to each country, it is very important, for maximizing the impact of the project, to create a strong link between our team and the industrial world.
In that purpose, the consortium will conduct a survey in the first phase of the project that will be deployed in all partners countries among industrial actors of the Energy field. This survey will allow to understand the context of each country and the energy transition plan, enabling to adapt the content of the developed cursus in order to be as close as possible of the industrial expectations.
In addition to this the French energy cluster will contribute all along the training units building phase bringing the ’industrial point of view’.
Finally, the consortium will bring a specific attention to the dissemination phase and would really like to promote the common work towards: Industrials / companies, other universities and students.
Renewable Energy Network Management Storage
Renewable Energy Network Management Storage - GREENTECH Erasmus
Renewable Energy Network Management Training - Greentech trains the next generation of technicians in the production of renewable energy, networks management and storage