Work skills needed to operate energy efficiently

Results from TrainERGY’s research presented at the 10th International Conference for Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Regional Development (ICEIRD 2017) and 22nd International Symposium on Logistics (ISL 2017).  

The research conducted so far as part of the TrainERGY Project aimed to identify a set of skills related to energy efficient operations and whether there is need for European SMEs to know and use them more.

The priority skills identified for the partner countries are:

Poland
1. Green marketing
2. Auditing activities
3. Interventions identification

Italy
1. Green purchasing
2. Reporting activities
3. Interventions identification

Greece
1. Green marketing
2. Reporting activities
3. Technologies for reducing pollution

United Kingdom
1. Green purchasing
2. Technologies for reducing waste
3. Green marketing

Apart from identifying the top priority skills for European businesses, the research focused on, for example, relevance and stage of implementation / advancement in use of the competences, as well as drivers and barriers for implementing energy efficient and sustainable operations within the surveyed companies.

The main findings from this part of research are:
• The relevance of competences required for implementing energy efficient and sustainable operations is lower in Poland, compared to the United Kingdom (UK), Italy and Greece.
• Stage of implementation / advancement in use of the competences required for implementing energy efficient and sustainable operations is similar for Poland, UK and Greece, but higher for Greece.
• The barriers to implementing energy efficient and sustainable operations in Poland, Italy, Greece and partly the UK are similar. However, the drivers are significantly different in the UK in comparison to Poland, Italy and partly Greece.
• The results for Poland identified the highest number of differences (when comparing to UK, IT and GR) in all analysed aspects.