A rising need for energy-saving solutions and the use of renewable energies has become particularly urgent in some Baltic Sea countries, given a high proportion of old buildings in need of renovation. For instance, in Latvia, 99% of existing buildings were built with very poor energy efficiency standards before 1993. In order to reach the EU energy 2020 goals, according to the 'Build up skills'national reports, in some EU member states the percentage of skilled workers has to be raised by up to 50%. Partners from Estonia, Germany, Hungary and Poland teamed up, to tackle this issue and develop and implement a further training course for Energy Service Managers, based on the specific needs of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). A compact course of 80 training hours has been designed as well as a comprehensive course of about 300 training hours. The background information, concept, curricula, including a train-the-trainer program, evaluation and experiences with this course is shared in this publication.
