Competences must be speeded up so that the North Jutland CO2 adventure can become a reality

In the future, many people in North Jutland will work with the capture, storage and use of CO2 (CCUS). In the North Jutland business lighthouse CO2vision, we are in the process of laying the tracks for that to happen. It is absolutely central that we kick-start competence development.

By Lene Klitgaard and Paw V. Mortensen, Aalborg University

The need for restructuring and development of competences within CCUS is accelerating and running now and here faster than the development of new companies in the area. Even among many North Jutland companies with a long history, the potential of CCUS is clear, and they are ready to adapt the business.

Green Innovation Lab
This means that impatience is growing for labor with the right skills to meet the transition to CCUS. We are helping to solve this task in CO2vision, and Aalborg University (AAU) is setting the stage for competence development with the Green Innovation Lab concept.

The Green Innovation Lab consists of four activities:

1. Green Innovation Learning
Together with the Energy Cluster, we stand for Green Innovation Learning events, which are about getting knowledge to flow freely between researchers, companies and everyone else who must contribute to CCUS. In November 2022, for example, we hosted an event in AAU's brand new innovation house, where we together created an overview of who works with CCUS in the companies and what the status of research in the field is.

Along the way, a discussion flared up about how we create – and perhaps move – manpower to solve CCUS challenges. We will highlight this on April 24 at the next green innovation learning event.

2. Serious play
Companies that participate in the Green Innovation Learning events and gain the courage to take further steps within CCUS can participate in a research-based course for developing the company within a self-selected topic. The course is guided by researchers from AAU, who work with learning and development processes using Lego.

The CCUS area has many unknown factors in relation to legislation and other regulation, technological knowledge etc., but despite the many unknowns, business models and technologies must be developed now. On this uncertain playing board, the recognized method "Lego Serious Play" can help to create common understanding and development faster, because Lego visualizes processes and conversations.

3. Green Innovation Entrepreneurship
As part of the North Jutland conversion to CCUS, entrepreneurial skills are needed. Therefore, we implement entrepreneurship courses at four AAU studies with a focus on change and innovation within energy, energy planning, change management and international business communication.

The participants are our regular students, and the courses are tailored so that they can be included in the students' other teaching. In all courses, the entrepreneurial skills are put into play in relation to a common case within CCUS. In this way, the students are trained to bring their role and skills into play in relation to CCUS and to collaborate on the task across disciplines.

4. Green Innovation Workshop
CCUS professionals must be able to apply their expertise in practice in collaboration with other disciplines. In the Green Innovation Workshop, we make a cocktail of reality, where cooperation is tested. The ingredients are: One day, one problem, a few companies and a great many students from several different studies and institutions.

There are participants from MARTEC's Machinist training, UCN's energy training and from the studies at AAU, which are also part of Green Innovation Entrepreneurship. A total of three workshops are planned, and at the workshops the students will be given a number of tools and recipes for entrepreneurial methods to solve the case in interdisciplinary groups.

The first workshop was held in November 2022 and the second in February 2023. If you ask the students, the workshops make sense:

"The workshop has given me a new perspective on both the quality and extent of my own knowledge. And I have been confirmed that the energy solutions of the future are best solved by mixed skills and approaches. This becomes clear in the meeting with students from energy programs at UCN and MARTEC. that on my AAU education there is a deep technical focus on bringing new technology into use. The others' approach is holistic and case-oriented, which gives them great knowledge of existing systems and an eye for optimization opportunities."
Student at AAU Energy