The project SECOVE aims to establish a network of cooperation among Centre of Vocational Excellence (CoVEs) in the sector of clean and sustainable energy. The CoVEs will be established in 5 European countries (Greece, Spain, Italy, Slovakia, and Portugal) and will all cooperate transnationally with each other through common structured forms of dialogue and communication.The activities of SECOVE are structured as follows. At the core of the project lies the establishment of the five CoVEs and of the SECOVE platform. A structured dialogue will be carried out locally and transnationally, in order to ensure a common, European approach across countries.The other activities can be intended as sectorial components of the SECOVE platform. Specifically, these are: the production of educational material that will make VET more relevant for the needs of the current sustainable energy job market, the nurturing of synergies between industry representatives and VET institutions, the promotion of an inclusive and attractive approach of VET towards women and the mainstreaming of a culture of quality and innovation in vocational education and training.A wide range of groups will benefit from the implementation of these activities: VET students and institutions, companies (both staff and managers) in the area of sustainable energy, women across educational levels and sectors, policymakers at local, national and European level and so forth.The activities foresee the organization of several impactful events: 28 local and transnational workshops as well as networking events with stakeholders (for a total of 590 participants), mobilities (benefitting 45 VET students), 9 Summer VET academies for girls in secondary education (180 participants expected), 4 capacity building events (training of 89 persons from partner organizations) and finally 3 Transnational Conferences (for a total of 210 participants).

SmartEnCity’s main Objective is to develop a highly adaptable and replicable systemic approach towards urban transformation into sustainable, smart and resource-efficient urban environments in Europe through the integrated planning and implementation of measures aimed at improving energy efficiency in main consuming sectors in cities, while increasing their supply of renewable energy, and demonstrate its benefits. The underlying concept of the proposal is the Smart Zero Carbon City concept, where city carbon footprint and energy demand are kept to a minimum through the use of demand control technologies that save energy and promote raised awareness; energy supply is entirely renewable and clean; and local energy resources are intelligently managed by aware citizens, as well as coordinated public and private stakeholders. This approach will be firstly defined in detail, laid out and implemented in the three Lighthouse demonstrators (Vitoria-Gasteiz in Spain, Tartu in Estonia and Sonderborg in Denmark). The three cities will develop a number of coordinated actions aimed at: • Significant demand reduction of the existing residential building stock through cost-effective low energy retrofitting actions at district scale. • Increase in RES share of energy supply, through extensive leveraging of local potentials. • Enhance the use of clean energy in urban mobility, both for citizens and goods, by means of extensive deployment of green vehicles and infrastructure. An extensive use of ICTs is planned to achieve integration and consistency in demo planning and implementation, and to enable further benefits and secure involvement of citizens. These actions will be aligned to city-specific Integrated Urban Plans (IUPs), and the process will be replicated in two Follower cities: Lecce, (Italy), and Asenovgrad (Bulgaria) to ensure adaptability and maximize the project impact. Additionally, a Smart Cities Network will be setup to support project replication at European scale.