Our Objective is the development of a European qualification for service and maintenance in the solar energy sector
SolTec is driven by clearly defined but ambitious objectives. Like in other sectors of the renewable energy, the solar energy sector mainly in Germany and Spain grew rapidly. The companies of this sector concentrated on technological development and delivery to market. With few notable exceptions skills development lags behind the economic development of the sector.
Today, the industry's key players operate on a transnational marketplace that cannot be regulated by single national market frameworks. Hence the need for agreed European qualification standards has become acute.
The SolTec initiative will support the employability of solar workers and the competitiveness of the European solar labour market by improving the vocational education and training in the field of service and maintenance. Despite the emergence of a truly European market regulations on the qualification of service and maintenance staff are still local and national in scope and unaligned to the European market. Thereby it poses administrative barriers to achieving the European Union's targets for the promotion of renewable energies and the targets of the LLL-program to bolster cross-border mobility of solar workers.
The SolTec partners seeks to enrol companies and sector stakeholders in the development of a European Qualification Profile fitting for the assignments of service and maintenance, to develop an appropriate modularized curriculum and a European pilot training course to meet these requirements. Existing expertise from national pioneer initiatives will feed the process. Finally, the project's full circle will include Europe-wide recognition and adoption of the established minimum standards via the extension of the network.
Currently unaligned national and regional qualification requirements demand case-by-case solutions. These are costly, cause artificial delays and reduce cooperation potential.
SolTec is driven by three key objectives:
Deliver a European qualification standard for operational skills in the solar energy sector
Boost the skills capital of the solar energy sector
Set up an industry-based skills network for the solar energy sector