skills for a green and digital future

Skills for a green and digital future – ETF communication campaign

Nations across the globe are facing enormous challenges to adapt and anticipate the skills needed by labour markets due to the green and digital transitions. New technologies and innovations in clean energy and sustainable practices require not only the development of new skills but the updating of existing ones due to the transformation of existing professions.

To meet this demand, education and training systems must reform to ensure that all people are equipped with the knowledge and competences to support and engage in these societal transitions. In addition, targeted actions are needed to ensure the opportunities of the green and digital transitions are equally available for women, young people, and other workers who are at risk of being excluded without them.

Throughout March and April 2023, the ETF’s communication campaign focuses on activities, challenges and success stories for developing digital and green skills.

What is the EU doing?

The European Year of Skills 2023 gives fresh impetus to the importance of lifelong learning to contribute to the green and digital transitions, supporting innovation and competitiveness, and inclusion.

The European Green Deal ambitions aim for zero carbon emissions by 2050 through respecting the earth’s resources, the health and well-being of its citizens and stimulating economic growth, for which education and skills play a fundamental role. As a global leader the EU’s ambitions are enacted worldwide through its external relations and assistance. This is where the ETF operates, providing support to the reform of education and skills development systems in the EU's neighbouring regions.

What is the ETF doing?

The ETF has pioneered an initiative – GRETA (Greening Responses to Excellence through Thematic Actions) – to incubate, nurture and share green skills. The initiative connects 18 centres of vocational excellence (CoVEs), from 8 different countries. Implemented in the frame of ETF Network for Excellence, GRETA supports the greening of vocational education and training through a whole institutional approach. The partnership allows CoVEs to learn from each other about greening practices, sustainable solutions and the technological knowledge necessary for future training programmes.

Skills development for the green and digital transitions is a transversal issue within all of the ETF’s activities and an important component of ETF policy advice to governments and stakeholders in the EU’s neighbouring regions. Close interaction between education and training systems and their environments is supported to build skills ecosystems integrated with economic, technological and social change, and greening and digital strategies. 

The ETF's approach to digital skills is one of  'radical digital inclusion'.

At the end of 2022 the ETF released its Digital Education Reform Framework developed within the Creating New Learning initiative. The framework aims to support policymakers in ETF partner countries and beyond to design, implement and monitor effective and equitable digital education policies that are tailored to the dynamics and characteristics of the surrounding ecosystem. 

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