Maritime technology and shipbuilding are amongst Europe’s most strategic industries. They are relevant sources of employment, and the need to enlarge and strengthen this technology in a zero-emissions world leads to the creation of partnerships among different educational institutions and industries. This, in order to improve the preparation of workers already inside the maritime industry and to prepare students to be future workers. There is this need for the EU to preserve and improve the EU’s global leadership in green shipping technologies. It is part of the blue economy that contributes to the European Green Deal and the transformation towards a carbon-neutral, circular and biodiverse EU economy.

The University of the Basque Country (UP/EHU) is involved in two international projects related to this blue economy. One of them is the LeaderSHIP project: a European funded project that kicked off in 2023 with 19 partners from across Europe. The objectives are to design and implement training for upskilling and reskilling current and future workers, meeting the targets of digitalisation and green transition.

The Energy Department of the UPV/EHU, within this project, has proposed a 150 hours-course with seven modules dedicated to navalization issues, hydrogen production and transport, fluid power CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) simulations.

The second project is the BLUESKILLING INNOVATION project, an INTERREG Atlantic Area 2021-2027 program. Four countries are taking part as partners: France, Portugal, Ireland and Spain (Basque Country). The objectives are upskilling workers in the Atlantic Shipbuilding and Maritime Tech Industry.

The next steps are being followed to get to this objective: skill gaps and needs of companies; analysis of training supply in each country; matching supplies and needs; curricula design; piloting; and result exploitation.

One of the main questions that arises from these projects is the type of students that we should direct the courses to: workers, VET (Vocational Education and Training) students or University students. With that in mind, several types of courses are being developed by the Energy Department of the UPV/EHU. However, there is still much work to do in the area of comparing available and needed skills.

On the other hand, one of the main challenges is to agree in pilot courses applicable to different countries with different needs and find a common point.

Keywords: Upskilling, Reskilling, International Collaboration, Blue Economy.