The 2014 Course for Sustainability will take place at Venice International University, San Servolo Island, Venice from September 28 to October 5.

The Course will build on successful past editions and is designed to prepare key stakeholders to be resilient in the face of growing environmental and sustainability challenges.

This year the course will feature two capacity-building components. The first component will be structured as a five days course (from September 29 to October 4) targeting the main challenges to sustainable development and resilience in the specific field of watersheds management. The selected participants will include high-level officials from ministries of environment and municipal authorities from beneficiary countries adjoining two important river basins in the Western Balkans: the Drin River Watershed (Albania, Kosovo and Macedonia) and the Drina River Watershed (Bosnia & Herzegovina, Montenegro and Serbia).

The second component, an innovative add-on lasting two days (September 29-30), will be structured as a high-level roundtable discussion. Founders, members and partners of the CEO Platform for Green Growth in MENA will join the discussion on green growth challenges including water, energy resource efficiency and green public procurement and its potential applications, among other sustainability issues.

The Course for Sustainability, which started in 2003 thanks to the support of the Italian Ministry for the Environment, Land and Sea, is jointly organized by the Thematic Environmental Networks Center (TEN) of Venice International University, the Regional Environmental Center (REC) and Agroinnova - University of Turin.

For more information please, visit the official website

The courses organized in cooperation with the Ministry of Science and Technology always pay great attention to the role of industries in China's sustainable development. What the forthcoming training on "Innovation of Enterprises and Green Technologies" tries to underline is that when innovation and protection of the environment run in parallel, companies can gain many advantages from the economic and social point of view.

The delegation that will visit Italy between September 6 and 17 is composed by 27 participants selected among provincial science and technology departments and centers for technological innovation. They will have the chance to see in first person many companies operating in very different sectors (mechanics, furniture, paper, boilers and steam engines, food), which have in common the objective of reducing the impact of the production processes or final products on the environment, through the deployment or creation of innovative technologies. At the same time the participants will be introduced to the main policies promoted by the Italian Government for the support of clean technologies and the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), one of the tools that companies worldwide can apply to understand which steps of their production cycle they can improve to reduce their burden on the environment.

Further details can be found in the training course agenda at the Sustainable Development Community website.
More info on the TEN Center activities can be found at this link.

The Ministry of Environmental Protection of China (MEP) dedicates all three of the training courses in 2014 to air pollution, prevention and control, underlining the seriousness of the air pollution in China and the determination of the Chinese government to tackle with it.  

The first MEP delegation was hosted in Italy on May 4-12, when 26 high officials from the central Ministry and from the provincial departments all around China attended the course.

The second MEP delegation is going to study in Italy from June 29 to July 7.  Nineteen high officials from the central Ministry and the provincial departments will address the theme of air pollution from several points of view: air pollution control at EU and Italian level, air pollution control technologies, air pollution control in industry and sustainable mobility.

The delegates will learn from the European experience how to manage air quality problems. The lectures will be delivered by experts and professionals at the Italian Ministry of Environment Land and Sea, Venice International University and Agroinnova Research Center of the University of Turin.

To complete the in class lectures with applied examples, two site visits will be organized: the delegates will be able to explore the working system of ARPAV, the local regional environmental protection agency and will visit a cogeneration power plant equipped with the most recent monitoring systems.

Further details can be found in the training course agenda.
More info on the TEN Center activities can be found at this link.

Training course for public officers and energy experts from the Mediterranean Region

San Servolo Island, Venice

November 2-6, 2014

Description

On November 2-6, 2014, Enel Foundation, in cooperation with the International Energy Agency (IEA), the Observatoire Méditerranéen de l’Energie (OME), the Renewable Energy Solutions for the Mediterranean Association (RES4MED) and Venice International University (VIU), organizes at San Servolo Island (Venice, Italy) the 2014 edition of the training course “New challenges for energy system in the Mediterranean Region” focused on the evolution of the Mediterranean energy system.

The course aims at providing a description of the current scenario of the energy markets in the Mediterranean region, discussing issues such as renewable energy sources development, interconnections, energy efficiency, gas markets.

The course is addressed to officers belonging to energy ministries, regulatory authorities and operators of non-EU Mediterranean countries.

Participation requirements and application procedure

The course is reserved to 30 participants, coming from non-EU Mediterranean countries, with at least 5 years of work experience within ministries, regulatory authorities, TSOs and energy companies. The course will be held in English, therefore a good knowledge of the language is required.

The application deadline is August 1, 2014.

Selection results will be announced by September 30, 2014

Participation costs (travel, accommodation and course tuition fee) will be covered by the organizers.

For further information please visit the Call for Applications - 2014 Edition of the Training