On 22 March 2024, the Large Scale Partnership on Offshore Renewable Energies met in Brussuels for its General Assembly, at the Fundación Galicia Europa.
During the meeting, it was presented the update of the LSP VISION document.
In addition, the FLORES project showcased its latest project activities, research, and tools designed to strengthen skills development in the ORE industrial ecosystem.
This meeting brought together a select group of industry leaders and stakeholders to share insights and knowledge and contribute to the development of a skilled workforce for the ORE. Thus served to discuss the FLORES project’s strategic orientations and to provide feedback that will shape the future activity of its working groups.
Highlights from the meeting
A total of 25 people of 17 organizations participated in this hybrid event.
Sandra Castañer (policy officer on blue skills and ocean literacy – DG MARE), provided a clear and valuable overview of the EU priorities and initiatives related with the development of blue skills and ocean literacy, including the latest news on offshore wind, precisely the communication on ”delivering on the EU Offshore renewable energy ambitions”.
This new communication updates the 2020 EU Offshore Renewal Energy strategy including a dedication section on skills. The sector today accounts for around 80,000 jobs, but it is expected to create almost 55,000 new ones in the next four years, and produce 300GW in 2050 (16 GW in 2022).
Sandra Castañer (policy officer on blue skills and ocean literacy – DG MARE).
The European Commission called all stakeholders to better coordinate with other economic activities, including fisheries, when allocating space for offshore wind, and also to pay attention to the effects of ORE on ecosystems and biodiversity. Therefore all related issues with the MSP, ensuring also the coexistence with defence infrastructure, and all new ocean energy technologies.
To be able to advance, to reach the green, fair and digital transition, we really need not only the right brains, but the right workforce and work power.
European projects
Lucía Fraga, FLORES project coordinator, summarised the stage of the project and the ORESkills Large Scale Partnership (LSP) in the Pact for Skills.
She mentioned the recent SHOREWINNER project, that will set 5 Centres of Vocational Excellence in the Southern European Community for Offshore Wind Energy, an she informed on the status of the ORESkills VISION document, which requires both an update on the sector targets and description, as well as an adaptation of the commitment, according to the EC new guidelines.
Afterwards Maria Cristina Cesaro (MARE FVG) shared interesting insights on the project promoted by the Shipbuilding LSPChallenge 4S: Challenged Transition for a Shipbuilding (mostly oriented for upskilling and reskilling on digitalisation but also towards the other relevant challenges of the industry such us the green skills)
Next steps fot the ORESkills LSP
At present we are 19 signatories in the LSP. During the meeting, all members were encourage to be active in the invitation of new partners and continue promoting the ORE LSP actions and results, as it is expected to integrate 30 new partners by the end of FLORES project (2025)
There are several difficulties to catch up with the speed of the changes, because formal education needs time to update curricula and train new workers. Moreover, it does not help if national systems ate too rigid. The update is a matter of the regions, nor the Ministries, which can make it easier.
FLORES Project presentation
As part of the meeting, the FLORES project explained in details its advancements in several areas:
ORE Skills Observatory – Lefteris Sdoukopoulos, CERTH-HIT
- The analysis of 981 job offers collected from April-October 2023 in 11 countries shows that engineers and Managers are among the most demanded occupations in the Offshore Renewable energies. The five occupational groups in highest demand have been identified, together with the top 10 occupations.
- Among the most demanded aspects for the ORE positions the analysis highligts that soft skills are of equal importance to hard skills. They mainly relate to communication skills, working in international and multi-cultural teams. Knowledge requirements are diverse often relating to specific software and technologies, data analysis and visualization as well as regulations and standards.
- 398 educational & training programmes collected in 10 countries and are in process of analysis.
The future trends of the skills needs will be driven by 3main trends: technological advancements, policy framework, and market dynamics.–
Promoting Lifelong Learning in ORE – Luis salgueiro, ASIME
- Guidelines to promote innovative approaches in Life-Long Learning (LLL) for the Offshore Renewable Energies (ORE) have been published on the FLORES website as well as on social media. All ORESkills partners are encouraged to review them to inspire best practices in the training delivery.
- A FLORES section was created into the Marine Training Portal to include a catalogue of best practices, training resources and supporting materials addressing the ORE collected and/or developed by the project, to facilitate its access to the educator’s and trainer’s community. The e-repository is ready on http://marinetraining.eu/flores.
- The FLORES Helpdesk has contributed to stablish 15 relevant new contacts. After 10 meetings, 1 new member, AVENTA, has joined the ORESkills group. 3 smaller collaborations were stablished with ACM, OPITO, Bluefloat.
Promoting Careers in ORE – Lucía Santiago Caamaño, UDC
The main advancements of this working group are related to the development of multilingual educational materials; the Update to the ESCO Occupational Profiles will start after the completion of the Skills observatory analysis. This analysis will also include information from the GREEN project, in which the most necessary skills for the green transition of the maritime technologies sector have been analysed.
- The ORE careers awareness raising materials include a Card game to discover ORE Job Profiles, available in ES, ES, FR, IT, and a set of 16 short videos with interviews to people working in the Offshore Renewable Energies Sector. They will be disseminated in the following events:
- A set of multilingual educational materials introducing the ORE addressing secondary education have been developed and is available for download in ES, EN, FR and IT.
Building Durable Partnerships – Lucía Fraga, CETMAR
The FLORES project targets to mobilise 100 stakeholders, involving 4 Administrations in the P4S-ORE activities, and reaching 30 new partners in the ORESkills LSP.
- A Community of users section is being implemented in the website. This section will display a map with information of both the ORESkills LSP signatories and FLORES community (including partners and Organisations following the project).
- Four pilot actions have been drafted and will be implemented during 2024: the leaders of the pilot actions in collaboration with UDC are adapting a set of 3 training materials for the implementation of the Pilot Actions. Most of them will adopt the form of a MOOC.
- Also a connection has been stablished with the Marine4yard project, in order to invite the FLORES community to real-scale demonstrators on novel methodologies in shipbuilding.All partners are invited to join the Mari4_YARD Didactic Factories Network
- In the next months, an analysis on the barriers to the creation of partnerships will be launched. A questionnaire will be distributed, complemented with a set of interviews. As a result, A set of recommendations will be issued to overcome these barriers, proposing orientations to recognise the efforts to bridge the gap between education and industry. Although the official recognition will require important efforts and time, smaller actions capable to be addressed within the organisations will be analysed.
