Finland's goal is to increase the share of renewable energy to 51% of the total energy production to replace fossil fuels. The plan is to at least halve the use of peat as an energy source by 2030. When renewable energy production increases in North Ostrobothnia, installers, maintainers, designers, site managers, experts and researchers are in shortage. The educational infrastructure invested in the project aims to solve two problems by offering new educational paths and entrepreneurship opportunities for those who remain unemployed or unemployed in the peat sector. The infrastructure acquired for JEDU enables the training of professionals in renewable energy and electricity grid construction. The infrastructure makes it possible to train installers and maintenance personnel for the tasks required by wind turbines, solar parks, and biogas plants. Increasing renewable energy production facilities in Pohjoin-Ostrobothnia requires large-scale electrical network construction work to deliver the produced energy to utilization sites. The infrastructure also includes the accessories for earthmoving machines, cable cars, terrain transformers, and batteries used for energy storage, which are necessary to construct the electricity network. The infrastructure of energy-efficient utilization consists of installation, maintenance, and fault diagnosis equipment related to heat pump technologies and gas-powered work machines and their maintenance and fault diagnosis equipment. The infrastructure acquired for Centria enables the training of mechanical engineering and electrical and automation engineering engineers as supervisors and designers for the tasks of wind and solar parks, energy storage, and electricity distribution networks. In the real-time simulator acquired for the University of Oulu, it is possible to visualize and quantify, for example, the energy use of a physics-based simulation and to study the user's experiences in the behavior of the new device, which is still in the design phase, in the desired use situation. With the help of the simulator, the design requirements are determined more precisely and thus increase the cost and energy efficiency of wind turbines, biogas plants, and solar power plants. With the help of the real-time simulator, the University of Oulu can train professionals for renewable energy expert and researcher positions in the future. In the UUPO-project, the infrastructure needed for renewable energy education is built in North Ostrobothnia. With the help of the infrastructure being built, JEDU, Centria, and the University of Oulu can, in the future, arrange training in different areas of renewable energy as well as new learning and career paths for those who either remain unemployed or do not find employment in the peat industry. In a parallel ESR+ project, Centria, JEDU, and the University of Oulu implement renewable energy learning paths that utilize the infrastructure. The training paths support changing entrepreneurship and thus the employment of peat sector entrepreneurs in new business areas.
