Europe faces three distinct challenges. It needs to decarbonise its economy to mitigate the worst effects of climate change. It needs to strengthen its energy security and reduce its reliance on imported fossil fuels. And it needs to boost the competitiveness of its industry with cheap and home-grown renewables.
Wind energy helps overcome all of three of these challenges. The EU wants to increase its wind energy capacity from 225 GW today to 425 GW by 2030. This comes with huge implications for the European supply chain. Europe does not only need to ramp up its wind energy manufacturing capacities and invest heavily in supporting investment like grids and ports. It also needs to tackle a serious skills gap: the European wind industry will need recruit and train more than 200,000 additional wind workers between now and 2030.
How can the industry attract young people to pursue a career in wind energy? Which job profiles and skills will be required in the industry going forward? How can educational programmes and curricula ensure graduates are sufficiently skilled to fill the more than 200,000 additional positions the industry will create by 2030?
The EU wants to address these questions. Incoming Executive Vice President and Commissioner for Skills, People and Preparedness Roxana Mînzatu in her mission statement for the next 5 years among other things announced an EU Vocational Education and Training (VET) Action Plan and an EU Strategic Action Plan for Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) disciplines.
WindEurope is involved in a vast of initiatives to address the critical need to align educational and training systems with the workforce requirements of the green transition.
WindEurope activities on education and skills I: Education Roundtable
Education policy is a national responsibility. But dialogue beyond national borders is crucial to shape policies. At a recent “Education Roundtable” WindEurope brought together representatives from UNESCO, the European Commission, national wind energy associations, academics, school networks and other education actors to discuss how educational programmes and policies can align with the workforce needs of the green transition.
The roundtable, part of WindEurope’s “Education for Green Transition” project, aims to integrate wind energy into curricula and strengthen teaching capacity. Its dual approach integrates top-down initiatives, engaging international organisations such as UNESCO and the European Commission with bottom-up strategies, such as initiatives with school networks, municipalities and regional wind energy associations. It fosters cross-sector partnerships to identify and develop the competencies required for the green transition.
WindEurope activities on education and skills II: UNESCO and EU initiatives
WindEurope also contributes to UNESCO’s Global Monitoring initiative Greening Education Partnership. The initiative awards the Green School Label to schools in line with the Green School Standard.
In partnership with the European Commission, WindEurope is further co-developing a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) module aimed at school principals and municipal-level education professionals. Informed by pilot projects in Poland, Denmark, and Ireland, the module will compile wind energy education resources developed in collaboration with WindEurope members and showcase examples of industry and education collaboration in these three different European country contexts. An example of such activities is the Country Donegal school children visit to an Energia Renewables wind farm in Ireland.
Other activities on education and skills
WindEurope has developed a variety of educational material and career tools or children of different age groups which can be found on the LearnWind hub. Younger children can learn about climate change and wind energy with Let The Wind Blow, available in over 30 languages. Older children and adolescents can read When I Grow Up, inspiring stories from 21 people working in clean energy. And offering teachers toolkits to enhance their capacity in teaching about wind.
Over the past years, the wind industry has taken various initiatives to tackle the coming skills gap, including the EU-funded projects like SKILLWIND and FLORES. WindEurope has also supported re-skilling initiatives like the Coal Regions in Transition initiative which aims to re-skill reskill some 8,000 people in the Romanian coal city of Petrosani in the Jiu Valley to work in wind energy by 2030. In Poland, WindEurope has supported the Work4Wind initiative which helped connecting Ukrainian refugees with Polish energy companies through a career support platform.
