GSS-VET: Geothermal and Solar Skills

The EU’s strategy for sustainable growth, Europe 2020, puts innovation and green growth at the heart of its blueprint for competitiveness. Indeed, it has set clear objectives in terms of energy sustainability, the 20-20-20 targets1. Moreover, according to the EU Directive 2010/31/EU on the Energy Performance Buildings, all new buildings by the year 2020 will have to be nearly zero energy buildings2. This leads to a whole new demand for environmental skills in the construction sector.

Following the involvement of ECTE in the funded project GSSkills, from the “Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion” programme, in which the skills gap for electricians and plumbers for geothermal and solar installations was clearly demonstrated and the needed skills were defined, ECTE has developed a Sector Skills Alliance (Lot 2), in order to capitalise on these previous findings in terms of skills needs and create a European offer of adapted and innovative continuous training.