Fieldwork · WP2 · WP3 · WP7
Among the five sectors the call proposes, the consortium chose energy as the systemic backbone the others depend on. But making energy, turning energy into matter and standing an energy system down are not the same competence. Expansion poses an acquisition problem; decommissioning poses an unlearning and transfer problem. Greenpulse encodes the distinction as energy made, embodied and retired, and holds every moment in at least five countries.
Primary energy enters the system
Nuclear, offshore and onshore wind, and the grid that moves them. Expansion poses an acquisition problem.
Energy and matter change places, in both directions
Energy → matter: steel, cement, ammonia, chemicals and batteries. Matter → energy: electrolysers and hydrogen. Both are energy held in matter.
A system is stood down and what it holds is reclaimed
Coal and lignite exit and nuclear dismantling. Decommissioning poses an unlearning and transfer problem: what is worth carrying out of a closing industry, and who decides?
The portfolio is deliberately not a set of build-out sites. Cedefop’s 2022–2035 forecasts put employment in electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply at +50% in Belgium and +28% in Latvia, while attributing to the green transition a fall of 13% in the same sector in France and of 29% in French mining and quarrying; the North Sea basin and Poland’s lignite fields contract on the same clock. Expansion poses an acquisition problem, decommissioning an unlearning and transfer problem, and the prescribed frameworks are written as though the transition were uniformly expansionary. The site typology encodes the distinction as energy made, embodied and retired.
The six fieldwork countries are not a convenience sample. They span a typology of European skill-formation regimes, so the regime layer works as the analytical control that prevents naive pooling and as the dimension by which findings transfer.
Statist · FR; BE statist/collective hybrid
Where the instrument is built: public authority still holds the levers that make a curriculum move, so a response interval measures an institution as well.
Statist/coordinated (Nordic) · SE
Adds the clearest European case of mid-career re-skilling institutionalised as a security guarantee attached to the worker.
CEE and Baltic post-transition · PL, LV
Where the instrument is tested: both entered the Union in 2004 from the regime Montenegro is now leaving, so running the three together shows what accession-past and accession-live does to competence formation.
Accession candidate (own 2028 target) · ME
The one non-EU field case: building the competences to operate under Union energy rules while aligning at a fast pace towards accession.
The liberal pole enters the design through its macro layer rather than through fieldwork: the prescribed layer is read against O*NET, the instrument of the paradigmatic liberal regime, and POLYGON’s comparability check carries it to Canada’s OaSIS (task 6.4), so that the coordination hypothesis is tested against a liberal-regime baseline without a liberal-regime field site – a limit the design declares rather than hides. Montenegro, the one non-EU field case, isolates a competence class that no macro instrument captures and that ESCO does not name: the capacity to work to rules made elsewhere.
A territorial configuration of transition, in a coherent employment and training area, where a documented ecological or energy transformation changes at once work processes, occupational knowledge and the training on offer. Three sites per country, 18 in all: two opened in Round 1 (M8–M14), the third in the Responsive Collection (ReCx of WP7, M29–M36), after the Science-Meets-Politics conference (M24, MS5).
The relation between a place where a change of process, technology or work organisation linked to the energy transition is observable and the training provision able to answer it in the same employment area. The pair, not the plant, is the unit of observation: the interval between a change of process and a change of provision, and the gradient of who is admitted to it, exist only in that relation.
A strand is not a site. It is a comparison the portfolio is built to support — the same competence observed in different directions of travel, across skill-formation regimes.
Build-out and dismantling in one portfolio
Nuclear appears twice. In the Cotentin it is build-out: the Flamanville relaunch, the Grand Carénage and the La Hague fuel cycle already strain recruitment. Around Mol, Dessel and Geel it is dismantling beside new construction: the BR3 reactor and Joint Research Centre facilities are taken apart next to the MINERVA accelerator and a small modular reactor programme. One safety-critical competence, observed as it is built up and as it is taken down.
Sites carrying this strand
Both directions of the embodied moment
Cement and ammonia join steel and batteries on the energy-to-matter side, and electrolysers join them on the matter-to-energy side: the Lixhe cement works and John Cockerill's electrolysers in the Liège basin, Grupa Azoty's ammonia at Puławy, Stegra's steel plant at Boden–Luleå and the Nikšić steelworks, and the Lyten battery plant at Skellefteå.
Sites carrying this strand
Sites, rounds and leads as in table 1.2b of the proposal; all remain indicative until D2.2 (M7). The Latvian counterparts are being confirmed with RSU before D2.2. Moments: M made, E embodied, R retired. For Belgium, the fieldwork language is shown as the proposal states it; Belgian fieldwork is run by CNAM.
Statist · lead CNAM
The nuclear relaunch (Flamanville, the Grand Carénage, the La Hague fuel cycle) already strains recruitment; the regional 3NC programme and the HEFAÏS welding centre in Cherbourg follow it.
Floating offshore wind and maritime decarbonisation recompose naval trades; the FORTEIM programme (CINav, UBO, ENSTA Bretagne) hybridises provision from vocational certificate to doctorate.
The H-TASE consortium builds hydrogen provision ahead of a market still stabilising: skills policy preceding the stabilisation of work.
Statist/collective hybrid · lead CNAM
Engineers from some twenty-five countries coordinate cross-border high-voltage flows, and every operator was certified on the regulated coordination tasks in February 2026. Counterpart: the English-taught energy engineering master of the Brussels universities.
John Cockerill assembles hydrogen electrolysers at Seraing and the Lixhe cement works is preparing a CO₂-carbonation reactor for 2028, both served by the Technifutur competence centre.
The BR3 reactor and Joint Research Centre facilities are dismantled beside the MINERVA accelerator and a small modular reactor programme, by a workforce of sixty-four nationalities trained by the SCK CEN Academy.
Baltic post-transition · lead RSU
A coastal site of energy made. Its training counterpart is being confirmed with RSU before D2.2 (M7).
Recoded in NUTS 2024: Kurzeme was LV003 until 31 Dec 2023.
Borders the Livonian Coast: Livonian identity is recorded only with consent, and the Livonian Institute is informed and invited to comment before fieldwork.
Energy made and energy retired on one site. Its training counterpart is being confirmed with RSU before D2.2 (M7).
A gas storage site, energy embodied and retired, opened in Round 2. Its training counterpart is being confirmed with RSU before D2.2 (M7).
Pierīga (LV007) was abolished in NUTS 2024 and merged into LV00A Rīga.
CEE post-transition · lead UW
ZE PAK's lignite exit, paired with the Just Transition Fund programme of the University of Applied Sciences in Konin for 1,539 participants.
Base of Baltic Power, paired with the offshore-wind courses of the Lębork skills centre.
Grupa Azoty curtailed ammonia output in the 2022 gas-price shock; paired with the chemical-technology classes the company sponsors.
Accession candidate (own 2028 target) · lead ZOCG + (RSU)
The coal plant and mine, paired with the vocational school that names the mine as a teaching partner.
Montenegro is a single statistical region at all three levels. MONSTAT places Pljevlja in the Northern Region; that tier carries no Eurostat code.
The Gvozd wind farm and the steelworks, paired with the electrical-engineering school and its licensed adult programmes.
The port and the Možura wind farm, paired with a vocational school that does not yet teach renewables: the gap the dyad is chosen to observe.
Statist/coordinated (Nordic) · lead IRES
Stegra's steel plant, paired with Lärcentrum, the Boden adult-education centre that built an industrial programme with it.
Lies within Sámi reindeer-herding lands: Sámi identity is recorded only with consent, and the Sámi Parliament and the herding communities concerned are informed and invited to comment before fieldwork.
The Lyten battery plant, paired with the municipal higher vocational programme in battery manufacturing.
Lies within Sámi reindeer-herding lands: Sámi identity is recorded only with consent, and the Sámi Parliament and the herding communities concerned are informed and invited to comment before fieldwork.
The low-carbon conversion of the West Sweden chemical cluster, paired with chemical-process operator programmes.