With the Net-zero Industry Academies, the Commission acts to train Europe’s workforce for the net-zero economy

The challenge

Over 70 % of businesses in Europe report that a lack of skills hampers their investment, and three quarters of SMEs say they concretely face skills shortages for at least one job role in their company. Moreover, between 35% and 40% of all jobs could be affected by the green transition that will amplify demands for new skills at all levels. With a view to creating the conditions for the green and digital transitions and ensuring Europe’s open strategic autonomy, this topic is thus high on the political agenda.

The response

In February 2023, the European Commission launched a Green Deal Industrial Plan for the scaling-up of the manufacturing capacity for net-zero technologies in its territory, i.e. solar, wind, heat-pumps, hydrogen, batteries, biogas and biomethane, carbon capture and storage, nuclear fission and other technologies. The Plan recognises, in its pillar on “enhancing skills”, the need for a large-scale up-skilling and re-skilling of the workforce to ensure the green transition. This is why the proposal for a Net-Zero Industry Act adopted by the Commission on 16 March 2023 contains a chapter on “enhancing skills for quality job creation”, that provides for the launch of Net-zero Industry Academies.

The Net-zero Industry Academies are designed to address skills needs in net zero technologies. They are not brick and mortar institutions (and as such they fully respect the competence of Member States in the field of education and training) and rather take the form of organisations, consortia or projects with three main functionalities:

1.       develop learning programmes, content and learning and training materials for training and education. This content is co-designed with industry and other relevant stakeholders, to ensure it is up to date and pertinent to actual skills needs.

2.       the content is rolled out via local education and training providers which can range from businesses to vocational education and training centers to social partners such as trade unions, depending on local needs.

3.       develop credentials for voluntary use by Member States and their education and training providers, in order to facilitate the transferability between jobs and the cross-border mobility of the workforce.

Each Net-zero Industry Academy will aim to train 100.000 learners within three years from their establishment. The European Commission will provide seed funding from existing EU funding programmes, but the Academies are expected to become financially self-sustainable.

What’s happening now

The European Battery Academy (recently renamed InnoEnergy Skills Institute) was already launched in February 2022 to provide for the immediate roll out of high-quality training across Member States, in the battery value chain.  The Academy is implemented by the European Institute for Innovation and Technology (EIT) and its Knowledge and Innovation Community: EIT InnoEnergy. The Academy uses a network of over 4000 local training providers to deliver its courses on the EU territory. To date, the Academy has 60 courses on its platform and has trained over 67.000 learners.

In December the Commission announced a solar academy to address the estimated need for 66.000 jobs in the value-chain by 2030 (in manufacturing alone). In January, a hydrogen academy was launched to address the needs of the hydrogen sector, which amounts to an estimated 180.000 skilled workers by 2030. Two more Academies are in the pipeline in the raw materials and the wind sector. The door remains open for the launch of more academies depending on the specific needs that will emerge in key net-zero technology sectors in the coming years.

The Academies complement existing skills policy initiatives such as the EU Pact for Skills, launched in November 2020, which has brought together public and private organisations including industry, SMEs, education and training providers and trade unions to pool efforts to upskill and reskill the European workforce. To date, over 1700 organisations have joined the Pact and formed 18 Large-scale Skills Partnerships in the 14 industrial ecosystems pledging to upskill more than 10 million people.

Member States also play an important role in supporting the roll out of our skills actions across the Union. They can make use of several EU funds, such as the European Social Fund+, European Regional Development Funds+, the Just Transition Fund, the Recovering and Resilience Facility and others to support the deployment of the Academies’ learning content on their territories and the implementation of the Pact for Skills actions.