Abstract:

The world is being confronted with urgent environmental challenges such as climate change, the unsustainable use of resources and loss of biodiversity. Innovative technologies can make a significant difference in terms of resource and cost saving, but they often fail to reach the market because they cannot demonstrate a successful track record of previous applications. In this context, it has appeared the Environmental Technology Verification (ETV) with the main aim of helping innovative environmental technologies to reach the market faster and easier. ETV is an initiative that provides for third-party verification of the performance claims made by technology manufacturers in business-to-business relations. By issuing a Statement of Verification, which is the product of a successful ETV process, ETV provides credible information on the new technology to could reach the market reducing risks.

Since its creation in 2011, ETV has been implemented in few European Countries (only 7 countries are Members States: Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Poland, France and United Kingdom) and thus, a group of different European organisations (SME, university, associations, technological centres, clusters, etc.) have created ETV4INNOVATION Consortium, with support from the Erasmus Plus Programme of 2017 (Project Reference: 2017-1-IE001-KA202-025703) whose main aim is to create a flexible learning pathway in line with the needs of learners and companies in terms of ETV.

Following the competences identified by a key study on general needs by SMEs towards ETV, Consortium has defined key competences for these students based on the core skills so companies can respond to these environmental issues. To provide students with the key competences related to environmental planning, we have created a Joint Curriculum composed by 3 main learning outcomes:
- Basic aspects of verification of environmental technology
- The ETV programme as a commercial tool on domestic and international markets
- Practical aspects of the ETV verification

Keywords:

Environmental Technology Verification, ETV, environmental challenges, environmental technologies, market, Erasmus Plus, Learning outcomes, Joint Curriculum.