The development and adoption of renewable and sustainable energy has become a top priority in Europe, and is Horizon 2020’s most prominent theme. Research into new energy methods required to reduce humanity’s carbon footprint is an urgent and critical need, and is reliant upon a flow of newly qualified persons in areas as diverse as renewable energy infrastructure management, new energy materials and methods, and smart buildings and transport.
Bioenergy is a particularly important field in this respect as it is at the cross-roads of several important European policies, from the Strategic Energy Technology Plan Roadmap on Education and Training (SET-Plan) to the European Bio-economy Strategy to European Food Safety and Nutrition Policy. European development in this prioritised field is stalled due to a lack of qualified personnel, a lack of cohesion and integration among stakeholders, and poor linkage between professional training and industry needs.
To address these problems, BioEnergyTrain brings together fifteen partners from six EU countries to create new post-graduate level curricula in key bioenergy disciplines, and a network of tertiary education institutions, research centres, professional associations and industry stakeholders encompassing the whole value chain of bioenergy from field/forest to integration into the sustainable energy systems of buildings, settlements and regions.
The project will foster European cooperation to provide a highly skilled and innovative workforce across the whole bioenergy value chain, closely following the recommendations of the SET-Plan Education Roadmap.
As aligned with the SET-Plan’s needs analysis for European development, BioEnergyTrain has 5 objectives:
• To address identified knowledge gaps through common training collaboration and best practices by clearly identifying the technology and knowledge chain for the development and leverage of European expertise. As identified by the SET-Plan there are two areas where expertise on the post-graduate level is urgently needed within the field of bio-economy development: bio-refinery engineers, and bio-resource value chain managers.
• To bridge the gap between industrial innovation and education in order to improve the practical orientation of higher and professional education to enable the market up-take of innovative solutions for SET-Plan measures.
• To create a network of integrated research and industrial infrastructures and develop programmes on the integration of practical training modules at these installations in curricula.
• To create a forum for stakeholders within the bioenergy value chain from research, universities, industry and the public sector to exchange information on educational needs and share knowledge and experience.
• To create a ‘network of networks’, linking HEIs with stakeholders in their regional context, providing information, awareness raising and training opportunities as well as hands-on assistance for implementing bioenergy systems.
The main deliverables will be the two master curricula Biorefinery Engineer (BRE) and Bioresource Value Chain Manager (BVCM). The curricula will be implemented at the two pilot universities University of Twente (NL) (BVCM) and Graz University of Technology (AT) (BRE). The new courses created by the BET partners will have open access through an online e-learning platform.
