EIT InnoEnergy kicks off training as part of EBA250 Academy

During the summer, The European Battery Alliance (EBA250) Academy, managed by EIT InnoEnergy, has signed its first two milestone framework agreements with APAVE and IFP Training to deploy training to reskill employees in the automotive and energy industry in France. 

The courses will focus on electromobility, residential storage and distributed energy storage to meet the growing demand for a highly qualified workforce in creating a successful European battery value chain.

The EBA250 Academy was established by EIT InnoEnergy in 2020 with the aim of training 150,000 workers in France and more than 800,000 in Europe by 2025. The EBA250 Academy education-sharing platform relies on a catalogue of 30 training courses that will be delivered online or in person and that are based on innovative teaching formats such as augmented reality. From 2022 to 2025, and based on feedback, the training catalogue will be expanded to cover a wider range of needs at different levels of qualification.

IFP Training

Active since 1975, IFP Training is a recognised training organisation in the oil and gas sector, with the company now diversifying its offering to support businesses’ workforce needs as they navigate the energy transition. With a rich experience in the energy space, IFP plans to retrain many oil and gas employees to provide the necessary skills for burgeoning gigafactories in France.

APAVE

APAVE is an international group specialised in risk management and industrial performance – focused on areas such as inspection, training and technical support. Already a leader in training for electric charging station installers, APAVE decided to commit to develop the skills of future battery industry in France.

"For 150 years, Apave has been working alongside its customers to support the technological revolution. The transport sector, with all its technological changes is one of the Apave Group's four priority development sectors. It is therefore logical that Apave has decided to commit to developing the skills of current and future employees in the battery industry in France. The design, production, maintenance and recycling of batteries require the creation of a dedicated ecosystem and constitute a formidable reservoir for the creation of tomorrow's green jobs".

Thibault Gousset, Training Director at APAVE

"We want to enrich the panel of training organisations that will work with us; we have advanced discussions with some of them, which is very important for us because these organisations are factors of multiplication of the EBA250 Academy in France."

Karine Vernier, CEO of EIT InnoEnergy France

These partnerships with the EBA250 Academy will be implemented in two stages:

• September will see a dedicated "train the trainer" phase carried out by EIT InnoEnergy's academic experts to certify the battery experts who will be in charge of accompanying the learners on the education-sharing platform.
• The first employee training sessions will begin on 15 October. The goal is for each organisation to train 300 people by the end of the year.

The announcement follows France becoming the second European country to sign an agreement with its government to mobilise budgetary funds to support the training or retraining of employees in new professions associated with the energy transition. Many French companies are already showing a strong need for training their employees.

"We have decided to integrate the EBA250 Academy training into our induction program for new recruits. All employees joining Verkor will receive basic training, and for the most technical employees, training in electrochemistry."

Gilles Moreau, Chief Innovation Officer at Verkor 

"For Renault, training is a priority, in particular in the context of acquiring all the new skills required by the electrification of vehicles. In this context of skills development, or even retraining, any initiative to build training courses that combine theory and experimental practice with an industrial vocation in the field of batteries is of obvious interest. As a pioneer of the electric vehicle, Renault has already developed strong in-house skills in the field of batteries over the last twenty years, but this is an area where the technology is still evolving. This is also why we must continue to expand our training efforts, enabling our teams to handle real objects in addition to more theoretical and numerical approaches."

Pierre Tran-Van, expert in electrochemistry at Renault Group