The Fuel Cells and Green Hydrogen Centres of Vocational Excellence towards affordable, secure, and sustainable energy for Europe project aims to close the existing skills gap in the fuel cells and clean hydrogen industry. The project will establish the H2Excellence Platform of Vocational Excellence that will create and implement lifelong learning offers and develop transnational curricula. In addition, by creating local clusters in a subset of countries with high potential for industry and the development of training programs and curricula, the desired impact of the project is to contribute to the energy transition targets laid out in the European Green Deal.
OVERVIEW
H2Excellence aims to establish a platform of centres of vocational excellence (CoVEs) in the field of fuel cells and green hydrogen technologies, that will provide a collaborative educational, training and development program to narrow and close the existing industry skills’ gaps. The CoVEs will bring together stakeholders such as universities, VET schools, industrial partners, and governmental bodies, forming strong links at European, national, and regional level. It is envisaged that different local clusters will be set up across countries with strong potential in the industry (e.g., Portugal, Spain, France, Finland, Poland, and Italy), with envisioned extension across Europe and a joint focus on different aspects of the hydrogen value chain, from production to applications and cross-cutting issues. H2Excellence will aim at creating world-class reference points for training in green hydrogen technologies for both initial training of young people, engineers as well as for continuing up-skilling and re-skilling of adults, through flexible and timely offer of training for the skills needs of companies in the green hydrogen sector. The VET clusters will undertake activities such as developing transnational, joint curricula, and lifelong trainings; interaction with universities to understand the current state-of-the-art technologies; exchange of VET teachers, students, and staff; partnerships between companies and professionals; regional ecosystems mapping and integration within the national/regional economic and innovation ecosystems. H2Excellence brings together 24 partners from 8 different Erasmus+ EU countries (+ 1 international partner). Fully in line with the EU Green Deal goals and energy transition targets, it intends to create the infrastructure necessary to embed vocational excellence in the European hydrogen sector. It will contribute to promote the sector towards quality employment, career-long opportunities, while meeting the needs of an innovative, inclusive, and sustainable economy.
MAIN OBJECTIVES:
- To support the goals of the European Green Deal by creating an educational offer that will tackle skills gaps in the sector of fuel cells and clean hydrogen technology.
- To create pan-European knowledge centres to become a benchmark in training, research, knowledge-transfer, and awareness-raising on fuel cells and green hydrogen tech¬nology.
- To map and integrate green hydrogen in local regional eco¬nomic and innovative systems to contribute to quality em¬ployment
- Design and develop open innovation, competitions and flagship projects oriented towards the increase of the attractiveness of the sector among VET students, teachers, engineers, and professionals.
BUDGET: 4,995,438€
LEAD ORGANIZATION: Vaasa University of Applied Sciences (Finland)
Site of the project: <under construction>