Considering that energy management has become a high important issue in future Europe and that there’s a huge lack of trained people to meet the energy management needs, it’s a must to develop a clear, transparent, transnational and crossbording e-training. As SMEs represent more than 9O% of the enterprises and more than 70% of the employment in the participating countries, it’s good to meet these enterprises in their needs for qualified energy managers. The project EEMS4SME or European Energy Management Specialists for SMEs will therefore develop an open training and innovative digital platform all over Europe. A lifelong learning digital environment will be established in the field of energy management to answer the huge lack of global training and vision for energy management, which can thus create employment all over Europe. This innovative e-learning platform is ideal to support individuals in acquiring and developing key competences to aim employability and personal development in a fast changing technical and environmental world. The training will support the development of national and cross-country sectoral skills strategies and will support permeability between different training pathways all over Europe. It will tackle all discrimination in gender, age and race as individuals can learn whenever they want, which is ideal to combine work and training. An international digital training with similar understanding will cross the borders of different regions, cultures and legislations.The transparency and comparability of energy management qualifications and learning outcomes will support labour mobility and facilitate transitions between training and the world of work in energy management all over Europe and will thus create employment chances for women, disabled, unemployed graduates in the energy management field, which is an investigation in Europe’s future. In the strategic partnership a good balance is reached between reliable expertise in education and training in energy efficient technologies for students and for adults with the university Thomas More Kempen – Knowledge Centre for Energy (Belgium), the balikesir sustainable development association (Turkey) and the Association Ecoserveis (Spain) on the one hand and partners with good knowledge of the needs of SMEs as the Chamber of Installation Specialists in Bulgaria (CISB), and the Chamber of Commerce of Padua (Italy). All partners have experience in developing training programs and in qualification and re-qualification of technicians and experts. Furthermore the partnership represents different climate conditions spread all over EU and partners have links with EU wide networks to disseminate the projects results. The exchange of best practices and the merge of different insights and experiences from partners all over Europe will guarantee a good common training program for energy management to meet the needs of many SMEs in Europe. In the course of this project, training activities will be carried out, respectively : Train the trainer, Energy Management Specialist training program and e-learning modules. The train the trainer course is transnational, will take place in Turkey during 5 days and is meant for 2 trainers of each participating country. It will be given by highly certified experts in energy management. The target is double : the different national training modules will be reviewed in order to decide how they will be processed in one global online platform and the trainers will be able to disseminate the training in energy management in their country in the second phase as a test for the online course. This second training is meant for SME staff to become energy management specialists. By an e-learning trajectory and a contact seminar the participants will be able to share their experiences, so that all the experiences can be discussed in a transnational project meeting to optimise the e-learning modules. In this respect, Energy Management System Training of SMEs personnel should be considered as a key target. For the process of dissemination, e-learning modules will be developed and will help the program to reach a wider audience. In the third phase at least 500 people will be trained during the project time with the global e-learning module for energy management specialists. The expected results will be realized is 2 dimensions : national and transnational. A national energy management structure will be available to implement in the facilities. (ISO 50001) and a certified expertise will establish sustainable energy management in the SMEs. A transnational digital platform for adults all over Europe who wish to specialize in energy management and energy efficiency, will be available. An inventarisation of exchanges of best practices in all units of the organisations will reduce energy consumption and production costs and will help to reduce emissions. This project will offer an effective way to mitigate global warming.
Due to climatological, environmental and nowadays even political problems, energy management is a highly relevant issue in the Europe of today and tomorrow, which needs a common European approach. The EEMS4SME project aimed to define a common training program. ISO 50001 Energy Management Standard had just been revised calling for a changed understanding of energy management. It is this new approach that was implemented in the project. The project indicates energy performance of the SMEs and requests to improve the performance. It improves the awareness of the energy efficiency topic and delivers the tools to improve energy efficiency in the SMEs by training people who could work as energy managers in SMEs. The project is innovative for the international horizon, for the content of the course, for the platform features. Therefore this project aimed to develop and implement an educational online platform for energy management, accessible for all SMEs in the participating countries with training courses for energy management. This aim was fully attained. With the EEMS4SME project the partners had the common target to develop and implement e-learning modules, guidelines, case studies of best practices, in order to give participants the chance to specialize in energy management for Small and Medium Enterprises, in the reach of all in Europe, over the borders of age, culture, gender and time schedules. With this common European training in energy management for SMEs we intended to raise social, financial and environmental awareness. With the exchanges of best practices in all units of the organisations the trainings wanted to ensure the reduction of energy consumption and of production costs by teaching better procedures to save energy in the SMEs. This way the EEMS4SMEs project wanted to reduce emissions, which is necessary to mitigate global warming. More than 75 employees from SMEs were determined as target groups according to the program in the participating countries, at the end of the project 166 people were trained. We intended to create and to improve interest and awareness about the energy efficiency topic, among small and medium enterprises and therefore we needed to develop the tools to do so. Among the trainees at least 20 women and a disadvantaged person have got the chance to participate during the project. 14 e-learning modules were developed to be used for online energy management trainings for SMEs. All these modules are available in English. Some partner countries as Bulgaria, Turkey and Italy felt the need to translate the modules in their national language to meet the needs of some trainees.
The partnership applied for the project EEMS because energy management has become one of the most important issues in Europe. In view of the commitment of all EU countries concerning Energy Efficiency and as we noticed that there’s a huge lack of trained people to meet the energy management needs, it was a must to develop a clear, transparent, transnational and cross bording e-training. As SMEs represent more than 9O% of the enterprises and more than 70% of the employment in the participating countries, it was necessary to meet these enterprises in their needs for well trained managers in energy efficiency. Last but not least, these training courses support labor mobility in energy management in Europe, creating chances for women, disabled and unemployed people and thus answering lacks of knowledge and inequality of opportunity. Within the international agreements all countries have targets to be carbon neutral and energy efficiency plays a key role to be carbon neutral. Energy management brings a hollistical and a systematical approach for the energy performance improvement. For the participating countries the energy management trainings developed, organised and guided through the project were more than welcome as some partner countries are of the poorest in Europe and the needs were very high. For Italy, the energy efficiency topic has been recognized as strategic field of intervention in the Strategy Paper of Padova Chamber of Commerce. Several studies pointed out the importance to consider energy efficiency in SMEs, who are more than 90% of the enterprises enrolled in the Business Register of Padova Chamber of Commerce. In Bulgaria the needs, addressed by this Project are more than obvious – especially now, in view of the situation, but also in view of the commitment of all EU countries concerning Energy Efficiency, and also in view of the lack of well-trained energy efficiency managers. Considering that Bulgaria is one of the poorest countries among members of the EU, training courses in Energy Efficiency Management are more than welcome.