Professional Capacity Building as the Public Sector Intervention Towards Sustainable Economic and Territorial Development: Key Study Knowledge Hubs Network for Energy Efficiency

The chapter is focused on the public sector role in professional capacity building necessary for the improvement of energy efficiency at the national and local level. It brings the results achieved by four consecutive EU-financed projects in reforming of the outdated training practices and implementation of nearly zero-energy building (NZEB). This chapter shows the legacy of the BUILD UP Skills initiative as public interventions towards higher energy efficiency of build environment via improvement of the skills in the construction sector. Although a number of barriers are still left, the idea for establishing of a network of well-equipped training centres (Building Knowledge Hubs) has great potential to increase the capacity to deliver new buildings and renovations with the highest possible quality. However, in many EU countries there are still many challenges on the road ahead—mainly in terms of qualified trainers, up-to-date training facilities and local capacity building for the professional communities the idea gained further support by Horizon 2020. Five new such centres (in Bulgaria, Romania, Czech Republic, Turkey and Ukraine) are established, all of them deliver training courses on specific energy efficiency related programmes and providing consultations for various stakeholders’ groups, including local authorities. Three new centres (in Greece, Croatia and Italy) have joined the network through another project, Fit-to-NZEB, looking to promote training targeted to the achievement of deep energy renovation. The idea of sharing experiences between specialized training centres has attracted support from many parties, triggering consultations for actual NZEB projects, demonstrations for policymakers and exercising positive impact on local energy planning, contributing to the overall market development. Starting in 2011 with identical projects in 30 European countries, the BUILD UP Skills initiative responded to the recognition that reaching the 2020 EU energy and climate goal represents a major challenge to the construction sector, which needs to be ready to deliver high energy performing buildings and building renovations. This goal requires a major effort to increase the number of qualified construction specialists at all levels, which is directly related to the accessibility and quality of the educational programmes. The 2-stage project in Bulgaria, coordinated by the author, succeeded in developing a National Roadmap for improvement of the qualification in the building sector; as a consequence, the NZEB standard and its impact on the construction practice is already a part of the national educational plans and programmes. Additionally, an e-learning platform for basic training of trainers was developed, currently available worldwide, and a number of train-the-trainer activities were performed in eight Bulgarian cities.