Eddie-Erasmus

#5 International Advisory Board

Representatives of EDDIE Project – „EDucation for Digitalization of Energy”, the Partners involved in the strategic implementation, important members and the external experts, participated and contributed at the 5th International Advisory Board (IAB) of the Project hosted online. Members who participated for the first time in an IAB meeting as representatives from EIT InnoEnergy and EERA were gladly welcomed. This relevant meeting was organized by the project coordinator COMILLAS Pontifical University, on Thursday, 24th of November 2022. The role of Education in the Digital Era for Digitalization will create the framework for EDDIE Project to take part in the decision-making process of Digitalization of the European Energy Sector (DEES).
The 5th International Advisory Board Meeting highlighted important and significant subjects for the development of the project such as the project status, the ongoing activities, and deliverables. Dissemination activities within EDDIE Project which includes social media interactions, exploitation of the results, future events, and several actions on EDDIE’s website were addressed in the 5th IAB meeting. During the meeting was presented the database of stakeholders, pilot activities, the blueprint strategy, the future EDDIE-Entity in the European Framework and 3rd Quality Assessment report.
During the meeting, some recent actions were presented, including some policy briefs, concrete interactions in terms of contributions and prospect cooperations with other European initiatives and frameworks, such as CEDEFOP, ESCO and the Pact for Skills. In addition, for the trial site demonstrations, five entities have designed some pilot activities, to be developed in Germany (Aachen, Herne, and Cologne), Greece, Italy and Spain, to test diverse aspects of the design of the Strategy. The activities detailed in the presentation cover a range of activities (MOOCs, Summer schools, Vet training, etc.) and EQF levels (1 – 8)
Moreover, the 5th IAB Meeting underlined a new European framework within the Digital Action Plan for Energy, which offers a great opportunity in the field of Education and training of skills in the Energy Sector. In this context, EDDIE Project was referenced in the framework of the ”Digitalising the Energy System – EU Action Plan” which was released on 18th of October 2022 by the European Commission (EC). The Action Plan is very important and relevant for EDDIE for the development of the long-driven sector skills strategy and the creation of a large-scale partnership on digitalization of the energy value chain strongly linked with the future entity, proposed by the Blueprint Erasmus+ project.
The 5th IAB meeting also highlighted the progress regarding the sector skills strategy with the focus on the evaluation and comparison of the business models. The final version of the Strategy will have the primary objective as the creation of the EDDIE-ENTITY. The framework of this Entity is related to the energy transition to be accelerated in the European Union through the Fit for 55, REPower EU and the associated necessary skills to support EC’S Digitalization of Energy Action Plan, and education through Pact for Skills. The European Commission Action Plan for Energy with focus on digitalization and will support the energy transition. Moreover, the Pact for Skills is underlined in the framework of the Entity as the Education is recognised as a major challenge in both energy and digitalization sectors. The Blueprint Strategy must ensure sustainability after the project ends, becoming a major reference in education of the energy sector in the future. The Strategy will be framed with the Pact for Skills becoming a reference of education for energy transformed by transition and digitalization.
The important mission of the EDDIE-ENTITY is to become the reference body for skills education in the Digitalization of the European Energy Sector. Its main activity will be to provide a platform to share training or disseminate skills in the context of the digitalization of the energy system.
The International Advisory Board plays a key role as an independent external quality consultant in the project, and it is providing requirements and inputs on goals and issues, monitoring project milestones, and supporting with final feedback on results and future expectations in other sectors and other blueprints. After this meeting an evaluation form was disseminated among the members of the IAB for strategic and important feedback and quality assessments of EDDIE work and research. The Quality assessments are performed throughout the entire implementation period together with project progress reports. Members of the IAB are important stakeholders from the European Energy sector as follows: EUROGAS; DERlab – European Distributed Energy Resources Laboratories; FSR – Florence School of Regulation; T&D Europe; CESI – European Confederation of Independent Trade Unions; The City of Aachen; DAFNI Network; City of Herne; ENTSO.E – European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity ItalGas, NTT Data.

EDDIE Consortium