Addressing skills gap: EBA Academy ready to launch

Following the 5th high-level ministerial meeting of the European Battery Alliance that took place on March 12th, Commission Vice-President Maroš Šefčovič tasked EIT InnoEnergy to launch the EBA Academy. Addressing the emerging skills gap has been indeed identified as critical to success since it is estimated that Europe will need approximately 800.000 qualified workers to operate in this new battery industry by 2025. It is therefore urgent to roll-out reskilling and upskilling programmes to meet Europe’s ambitions.

“To facilitate, I have tasked EIT InnoEnergy to team up with interested Member States to help them prepare their country-specific project proposals. InnoEnergy will soon launch a so-called EBA Academy, developing curricula and training content based on the industry’s skills needs and in partnership with local training professionals,” said Commission Vice-President Maroš Šefčovič during the press conference that followed the high-level meeting.

A dedicated platform to tackle the emerging skills gap across the battery value chain

With the EBA Academy, EIT InnoEnergy is building a pan-European education sharing platform that will drastically reduce the cost to skill workers while reducing the leadtime to start the programmes. It provides local training providers access to industry-proven training content ready for distribution to their industry clients and end customers. From blue collar to higher education, all levels of training needed within the European battery industry are addressed.
Transactions on the EBA Academy platform will be commercially-driven where local content providers will sell their educational content and materials. Such content and materials will then be delivered by local training providers. The quality of delivery is managed through local training coordinators, supported by central EBA Academy quality assurance services.
Member States will fund these up-/re-skilling trainings of the workforce using existing funding instruments towards industry or local training providers. Between today and 2025, 800.000 workers will be reskilled thanks to the EBA Academy to match the industry needs across the entire battery value chain.

EIT InnoEnergy’s early action providing tools to scale fast

EBA Academy is built on the foundation of EIT InnoEnergy’s Education Services track record. The skills gap on batteries was identified as a major challenge to successfully keep on developing the European battery industry. At the start of the EBA initiative in 2017, EIT InnoEnergy invested early in providing educational content and materials to serve this critical need. Based on continuous input and feedback from industrial partners active in the EBA250 network, the content is continuously maintained and updated to technological latest status and skills gap highest needs. EIT InnoEnergy actively participates in several European projects contributing in further refining this skills gap (ie LiPLANET, ALBATTS, Battery 2030+, Batteries Europe).

Challenge-driven modules ready to be deployed

Based on the identified skills gap, experts from EIT InnoEnergy and its network of partners developed over 30 learning packages, which have served over 40k learners in the last 3 years. From modest learning goals to complex organisational demands, from purely online to blended courses, from informational to certification programmes, EIT InnoEnergy tailored and delivered challenge-driven programmes based on real-world challenges to close this skills gap.

EIT InnoEnergy uses the latest educational technologies to create interactive learning environments, where networking with other learners and access to experts is embedded within the learning platform.
The current online portfolio offers self paced challenge-driven learning, as well as blended learning programmes.

Strong from its early investment in the Battery Storage education, EIT InnoEnergy fully delivers on its task to deliver curricula and training content based on the industry’s skill needs in partnership with local training providers. Next step is the roll-out with more industry partners and local training providers.

Endorsed for the immediate applicability of learnings

Learners from varied industries and backgrounds find immediate use in the learnings from EIT InnoEnergy’s modules and programmes. “I’m really happy to have completed the programme this summer and to have my new knowledge about batteries and battery storage applications to be able to tackle coming projects and to help transform the construction industry to more sustainable projects” said an Energy Engineer at Skanska after attending the Battery Storage Masterclass 2020. Entrepreneur Pedro Alves declared that “this course provided [him] the tools to broadly understand the battery storage market and its main business opportunities, making it easier to build real business cases”, while joining the Battery Storage and Smart Grids Applications last year.
Overall, 97% of learners would recommend these courses to peers and 80% of learners claim that the programmes advanced their careers. As a result of the combined efforts of continuously requesting input and feedback on needs from industry, as well as creating challenge-driven learning with real-world challenges from the partners in EIT InnoEnergy ecosystem, the review are unanimous about the immediate applicability of learnings in their jobs.