eCOOP 2

Europe faces persistent skills shortages at the intersection of green and digital competences, particularly in energy- and sustainability-related sectors and among adults in vocational pathways and low-qualified learners. Green and digital skills are too often taught in isolation rather than in integrated vocational contexts, provision is weakly connected to real workplace needs, and VET trainers lack tested tools and flexible formats to update their programmes quickly - so learners finish training unable to support local energy initiatives.

All five partner regions are rural, semi-rural, or in transition. Kozani, where VERDE is based, historically produced more than half of Greece's coal-based electricity and is now undergoing a deep post-lignite transition - the specific evidence base and lived experience VERDE brings to the partnership.

eCOOP 2 - Building Community Capacity to Engage with AI-Driven Energy and Smart Village Systems - is the sequel to the eCOOP project, which built community awareness of the energy transition. eCOOP 2 turns that awareness into vocational skill.

Running for 24 months from October 2026 to September 2028, eCOOP 2 is an Erasmus+ KA220-VET cooperation partnership coordinated by the Slovak University of Agriculture in Nitra, with partners in Italy, Ireland, Türkiye, and Greece. The project's objectives are to:

• Strengthen the application of green and digital competences by VET learners, shifting learning towards problem-solving, work-based tasks, and realistic energy and sustainability scenarios.

• Improve employability and responsiveness to labour-market needs, reducing skills mismatch in sectors affected by the green transition, with emphasis on SME and local energy contexts.

• Strengthen the adaptive capacity of VET teachers and trainers so they can integrate green, digital, and labour-market-oriented competences into regular provision.

• Embed sustainable cooperation between VET providers, SMEs, and local actors, supporting continuous work-based learning and smoother transitions from training to employment.

The project delivers a Micro-Guidance Framework at EQF levels 3–4 built on a practical 'observe–decide–check' logic, more than 20 visual assets and 10 short microlearning units released as open educational resources, and VET Energy Labs in five countries: learner teams walk real facilities - schools, SMEs, public buildings - document lighting, HVAC, and standby loads, analyse their findings with simple digital tools, and propose low-risk improvements that companies and municipalities then validate at national roundtables. The project targets more than 60 learners, 30 teachers and in-company mentors, and at least 5 Energy Lab sites.

VERDE serves as the project-wide Ethics, Energy Transition & Policy Leader: providing expertise on energy transition, sustainability, and climate policy; ensuring safety, ethics, and GDPR compliance across the project; validating the responsible use of AI-supported tools; and contributing to the policy-oriented outputs. VERDE also owns the framework strand on digital responsibility, ethics, and GDPR in practice, and hosts the project's transnational meeting and the Train-the-Trainer learning activity in Greece in May 2027.