Skills4EII: A European Initiative for Workforce Transformation in Energy-Intensive Industries

The Skills Alliance for the Green, Digital and Social Transformation of the Energy Intensive Industries (Skills4EII) will uptake the results of the European Steel Skills Alliance (ESSA) and the Skills Alliance for Industrial Symbiosis (SPIRE-SAIS) and further develop them within the project aligned with the Large Scale Partnership Energy Intensive Industries (LSP EII) under the Pact for Skills. Essential part is to identify and adjust additional cross-sectoral and sector specific skills gaps for specific sectors and national-regional skills and training ecosystems. Skills4EII create a common framework integrating specificities of all industries to continuously and proactively adjust the skills demands of the energy intensive industries (including further process industries).
This will be done by expanding the results of the two blueprint projects and develop a broader alliance and framework to close the skills gaps for specific (additional) sector needs (e.g. SME specific skills in the ceramic sector) and use synergies for cross-sectoral relevant topics and activities (such as Image & Recruitment, cooperation for the exploitation of Industrial Symbiosis, Industry 5.0, Artificial Intelligence). It is essential to open and scale up the challenges and gaps already identified and those still to come in a more general scope (beyond steel and industrial symbiosis) and to focus on the one hand, on the specific needs of the different industrial sectors (Steel, Minerals, Water, Engineering, Logistics, Non-Ferrous Metals, Ceramics, Raw Materials, Chemicals, Cement, Pulp & Paper, Refinery). On the other hand, the rollout to existing and new national-regional ecosystems is key. Central element to support this is the online training platform HUB 5.0 (integrating the ESSA steelHUB and the SPIRE-SAIS online platform SKILLS4Planet). Furthermore, Skills4EII is also taking the next steps toward a Process Industry 5.0, becoming more human-centric, sustainable, and resilient.