Where workers and communities drive the green transition: meso-level evidence on the competences Europe needs

Green Pulse — Polyphonic Up/reskilling for Living Skills Ecosystems

“To build a boat is not about weaving the sails, forging the nails, or reading the stars; to build a boat is about birthing a common desire for the sea in our hearts.”
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Citadelle, Chapter LXXV (1948)

HORIZON-CL2-2026-01-TRANSFO-07

“Most available research on the green transition focuses on macro-level policies, overlooking how workers and communities can drive change.”

— European Commission, Work Programme 2026

Coordinated by

Conservatoire national des arts et métiers

Established 10 October 1794·230+ years of continuous lifelong learning·the oldest of its kind still in service

Founded by decree of the Convention nationale, on Abbé Henri Grégoire’s proposal, to keep the arts and crafts — and teach them to working adults. GreenPulse builds on its unbroken 230-year record of evidence on industrial transition, competence and labour.

Why energy — single-sector focus

The sector TRANSFO-07 must answer

Cedefop demand-validated

Cedefop’s Skills in transition to 2035 places energy among the sectors most reshaped by Green-Deal skills demand.

Three regional anchors ready

Norrbotten (green steel + H2), Grand Est (white hydrogen exploration), Velenje (SAŠA coal phase-out): three live transitions, diverging technology pathways. Replicability built in.

Twin-transition spine

The green-digital interface is densest in energy: grid-data literacy, AI-fluency for renewables operations, copilot workflows on industrial software. Strongest ground for Outcome 3.

Narrative-evidence ancestry

The best-documented sector in the narrative-evidence literature: Moezzi · Janda · Rotmann (2017), Towers · Chabay · Okada (2022), Sleigh on carbon-economy decline, the Helgeson observatory family.

Lowest-risk, highest-citability single-sector choice for TRANSFO-07. Multi-sector scaling can follow.

Fieldwork locations — Three energy phenomena

Industrial electrification — Norrbotten, Sweden · Green steel production & heavy manufacturing electrification

Industrial electrification

Norrbotten, Sweden · Green steel production & heavy manufacturing electrification

Renewable integration — Grand Est, France · Industrial heat recovery, energy-intensive manufacturing transition

Renewable integration

Grand Est, France · Industrial heat recovery, energy-intensive manufacturing transition

Just transition — Velenje, Slovenia · Coal mining phase-out & worker retraining into energy sectors

Just transition

Velenje, Slovenia · Coal mining phase-out & worker retraining into energy sectors

Picking up where EU work left us

A decade of EU skills research mapped the demand.GreenPulse identifies the competences, explains why gaps reproduce, and translates findings into policy.

Cedefop · JRC · SkillsPULSE · BRIDGES 5.0 · the energy-citizenship cluster · the H2020 coal quartet — Europe has built an extraordinary quantitative baseline on green-transition skill demand. GreenPulse does not duplicate it. We carry it forward with what TRANSFO-07 explicitly asks for: identification of meso-level competence evidence, actionableE&T and policy guidance (including gender, disability and age-of-intervention dimensions), and operational green-digital competence integration.

EU research has built

Quantitative baseline

  • Cedefop ESJS2 — internal skill-gap microdata (EU-wide)
  • SkillsPULSE D2.1+D2.2 — three-layer mismatch taxonomy on vacancy-NLP
  • Lightcast online job-vacancy corpus — AI-skill demand signals
  • OSKA · EDUFI · UK Unit for Future Skills — national foresight templates
  • JRC twin-transitions report · Cedefop Skills in transition to 2035 — EU-policy anchor

What the baseline cannot see

The persistent blind spot

  • Which competences workers actually use at the meso-level — beyond aggregate vacancies
  • Why structural shortages reproduce where and how they do
  • How workers narrate competence to themselves and others — and where GreenComp frames land or don't
  • What the first prompt, dial-turn, agent-reply reveal about competence-in-formation
  • How to translate evidence into E&T curriculum + policy briefs civil servants and social partners can actually use

Evidence × explanation × policy

What GreenPulse adds

  • Outcome 1 — Atlas of Transitions: meso-level competence map per anchor region, cross-walked to GreenComp's 12 competences and the SkillsPULSE mismatch taxonomy
  • Outcome 2 — Policy Integration Roadmap + Messaging Toolkit: dated, costed competence-pathway briefs to DG CLIMA · DG EMPL · DG RTD, with disability + gender + age tracks (GRBC, Academies)
  • Outcome 3 — SED-PAN Digital-Green Competence Matrix + OSDEM human-agent dialogue capture (LLM copilots logged as competence evidence)
  • NECx narrative-cascade workshops + Historical-Archival fieldwork (CNAM · MUAM) — the meso-level evidence base no other consortium will field
  • Mandatory dimensions woven in: STR Partnership · Erasmus+ · Pillar of Social Rights 2030 · NEB Facility · open-science via EOSC

The handoff in one sentence

SkillsPULSE measures what skill is missing. GreenPulse identifies the meso-level competence, explains why the gap reproduces, and delivers the policy briefs and curriculum updates that close it.

Three TRANSFO-07 outcomes, three operational answers — Atlas of Transitions (identification), Policy Integration Roadmap + Toolkit (E&T + policy translation), SED-PAN + OSDEM (green-digital). Both quantitative and qualitative methods sit inside the consortium: SkillsPULSE through Università di Pisa (partner); BRIDGES 5.0 (€4.6M, CL4) through CNAM (beneficiary, finishing Dec 2026 — its results arrive as GreenPulse starts). The handoff is not a promise. It is built into the consortium roster.

See the full clustering map for the ~30 EU projects GreenPulse webs into across 7 tiers.

Confirmed consortium

14 partners · 9 countries + 1 international · 6 consortium roles

Academic & Heritage
CNAMNMSUniversity of WarsawUniversità di PisaRīgas Stradiņš University
Research Institute
Green Economics InstituteETUI
Cultural Institution
MUAM
Civil Society
ENOPBSF
Youth Organisation
ZOCGGYG
SME
QUIZASPolygon

4 advisory / gap roles still open — see Partners.

Geographic footprint

Where the consortium reaches

Drag to pan · scroll / pinch to zoom · hover any partner country for detail

3 continents · 14 partners

Consortium partner countryCNAM Centers · 23 countries

🇪🇺EU member states

🇫🇷FR🇧🇪BE🇸🇮SI🇱🇻LV🇵🇱PL🇮🇹IT

Future EU · accession 2028

🇲🇪

Montenegro

ZOCG

🌐Associated / international

🇨🇦CA🇬🇧GB🌐INT

CNAM Centers · institutional reach of the coordinator

23 countries · 4 continents · Métropole + DROM-COM

Algérie · Bénin · Burkina Faso · Burundi · Cameroun · Chine · Côte d’Ivoire · Djibouti · France (Métropole + Guadeloupe · Martinique · Guyane · Réunion · Mayotte · Nouvelle-Calédonie · Polynésie française) · Gabon · Guinée · Liban · Madagascar · Mali · Maroc · Mauritanie · Niger · République centrafricaine · République du Congo · Sénégal · Togo · Tunisie

Coordinator’s teaching + partner-centre footprint. Distinct from the GreenPulse consortium partner countries above; shown to indicate scale of CNAM’s institutional reach.