ABOUT THE PROJECT

Grant Agreement N°: 2022-1-FR01-KA220-VET-000087396

Erasmus+ Sector: Vocational Education and Training

In December 2019 European Commission presented the EU Green Deal, a roadmap for the green transition in Europe.

The EU Green Deal sets in place ambitious targets, such as the reduction of greenhouse emissions by 55% until 2030 (EU Green Deal), accompanied by policy proposals as a roadmap to fulfil them. In this respect, increasing renewable energy production instead of traditional energy production activities is a high priority. In 2020, renewable energy sources overtook fossil fuels in the EU-27 energy mix (Ember and Agora Energiewende’s annual report, 2021). 

In general, green transition promotes middle skilled and paying jobs, while at the same time offers limited levels of job polarization (European Commission, 2019). In addition, low to medium educated employees are expected to fill the new jobs created by climate action to perform less advanced tasks (Lewney et al., 2019). This transition of the energy labour market will practically affect the labour force in different stages, according to the quality of the skills acquired. According to the EC’s (2020) phrasing ‘different skill levels will benefit from different stages of the greening process’. In addition, currently skills mismatches have been underlined concerning the process of the green transition (EC, 2020), while few governments have adopted skill policies in that direction (ILO, 2018).

Furthermore, the process of greening the economy is implemented in the era of digitalization and this fact pressures even more for skills policy response. Building on that policy space, the Project PowerUp seeks to make VET more relevant and flexible in line with the needs of the EU regions affected the most by closing fossil-fuel energy production stations.

The PowerUp project addresses two general priorities namely, environment and the fight against climate change, and innovative practices in a digital era; and two sectoral, namely increasing the flexibility of opportunities in vocational education and training and contributing to innovation in vocational education and training and aims at limiting job losses as a consequence of the green transition in Europe. The project develops strategic partnerships between universities and educational centers as well. 

The PowerUp Project’s consortium has been in place in order to address a common global challenge, namely the job transition of conventional power plants in post-fossil fuels’ generation areas. Each partner has identified different needs depending both on its organization type and its expertise.

The consortium consists of 7 partners from 4 European Countries (France, Greece, Bulgaria and Cyprus). Partners share similar challenges related to education and training activities, energy transition as well as employability and circular economy. 

The consortium covers a variety of backgrounds, ensuring the implementation of a multi-level and interdisciplinary partnership that covers much of the European space. 

The selection has been based on the partners’ relevant work and experience, and the complementarity they bring for the attainment of the objectives of the project, as well as previous successful collaboration between some of the organizations in other projects.

 The consortium has also been formed in a way that creates a stakeholders approach between a University and an education center in all three piloting countries.

 Collectively this partnership gathers the academic and research expertise, the technical education and training know-how and competencies, the consulting and communications management expertise in energy related issues to better integrate an efficient energy and resources strategy at national and EU levels, and finally a significant experience in employability and job market integration.

The cooperation between partners from the consortium countries will lead to development of qualification and appropriate training methods and how to use them to enable social dialogue and the development of European community of people from former active energy related jobs, so to exchange ideas, practices, skills and experiences, that will help them adapt in the new job market reality. 

 The pilot implementation of the project will be profoundly designed based on good practices and advancements from France and will be carried out in three countries, namely Greece, Cyprus and Bulgaria. However, the results of the project could be used to enrich policies in all EU regions and countries that will face similar risks.