Despite the ongoing crises, EuropeOn will hold its Annual General Meeting and Annual Conference in November, although this year’s edition might have to move to a digital format. While last year’s edition was hosted by our Swiss member EIT.swiss in magnificent Montreux, we are confident our programme for 2020 will make up for the 2019 scenery. The Annual General Meeting will take place on the 17th of November for EuropeOn members only. 

The EuropeOn Conference will take place on the 18th of November in the afternoon. Still to be confirmed, the programme will be split into two main sessions, where EU climate policies pertaining to electrification stakeholders will be examined from a human capital perspective with the input of experts from the electrical contracting sector. 

Skills in the electro-technical sector will be the first aspect to come under the microscope as this is the most widely acknowledged and pressing issue for energy transition professionals, as attested by the momentum behind EuropeOn’s Skills4Climate campaign. Further, this aspect becomes even more crucial in light of the economic recovery policies being designed, that should focus in part on climate spending to kickstart the economy and bridge the investment gap of the EU Green Deal. 

For the second part of our conference we will delve into the transport sector and more specifically electro-mobility. With a steadily increasing share of emissions, transport will have to be addressed soon in order to meet our climate objectives. On top of car CO2 standards, the EU has planned initiatives in the near-future to address this sector that should incentivise electro-mobility even further and to new modes of transport. As electrical contractors are active on all types of transport electrification, from EVs to on-shore power supplies,  we ail to bring this on-the-ground experience in charging infrastructure deployment to EU policy debates. 

Further, this will be the time to release our newest figures on job creation in the electrification of buildings and transport. With the Renovation Wave and recovery pans in debate, we want to inform policymakers with the latest employment data from our sector and we’ll be looking at the jobs that stand to be created with increased renovation rates and with a switch to a prosumer model for our end-users. 

To finish on a positive note, we have examined the opportunities that have arisen from the Covid crisis for electro-technical businesses, such as changes in productivity and how they have been able to respond to these difficult circumstances, with infrastructure and installations for connectivity and e-services, or by taking on apprentices that would otherwise add on to the unemployment figures. 

We hope you can join us for these exciting exchanges and stay tuned for more details and a complete agenda!