Development of VET training on energy efficient stoves and fireplaces

According to Paris Communique adopted by 195 countries on December 12th, 2015, the main long-term aim for all countries is to work together to reduce emissions of climate pollutants in order to help improve air quality, public health, food security and energy efficiency at the local and regional level and therefore contribute to achieving the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development. At the same time, the European Union has set a timeline for 2020 to radically reduce the CO emissions by 20% in member states. In many EU countries the solid fuel burning stoves and fireplaces are still the main source of heating in households in rural areas accounting for considerable emissions of CO. The stove building sector has to respond to the changes by introducing up-to-date technologies and solutions as well as enabling the VET sector to change and adapt to the current needs. The ENEFFIS project targeted the need to promote environmentally friendly and energy efficient stove building by developing a common European qualification standard (O1), training curriculum for initial and continuous vocational education and training (O2), the certification scheme of a stove builder (O3), and policy recommendations (O4). The project partnership developed an innovative course on energy efficient stove building aiming to empower the stove builders with a new set of skills and competences, with regard to principles and technologies related to the designing and building of energy efficient and green stoves and fireplaces fired by solid fuel. The developed learning resources on stove building specifically address the skills needs in the technical, environmental, regulative and customer consultation aspects. The link to the European reference tools (EQF, ECVET) supports future recognition and validation and addresses the mobility needs of the stove builders workforce in Europe.The project partnership consisted of 5 organisations from from Lithuania, Estonia, Germany and Finland that represented VET providers, non-governmental associations as well as the specialists and practitioners in stove building.Main results and impact achieved: - By using the best practice examples from Germany and Estonia, development of an updated qualification standard for a stove and fireplace builders, accompanied by a modern curriculum and training/learning resources; - Establishing a Qualification Scheme which ensures transparency and accessibility in competence acquirement, assessment, validation and certification, thus creating favourable conditions for labour mobility within a country and across the EU; - Implementation of two short-term transnational training activities for trainers of VET institutions who acquired the knowledge and skills for development of the curriculum and implementation of the training course in their respective countries; - Delivering recommendations for normative documents on energy efficient and environmentally friendly stove building.