TREND is a two-year regional initiative designed to foster the development of renewable energy potential of the Drava River – Croatia-Hungary-Slovenia Cross Border Region.

In this timeframe, the project will carry out trainings addressing local SMEs, NGOs, municipality opinion leaders and higher education students in order to provide them with all necessary knowledge and skills to launch a series of local renewable energy initiatives.

The project aims to:

• Train the local actors to be able to organize their community for launching a local renewable energy initiative with bottom up approach.
• Train the local actors to be able to select the technologically, agriculturally, economically, socially and environmentally best fitting option for their community’s development.
• Map the regional best practices and seek the competences needed for a successful renewable energy initiative.

The main accomplishments are listed below:

International renewable energy best practice handbook: state-of-art renewable energy initiatives undertaken in the member regions will be summarised. A previous survey will identify strong and weak points of the national good practices which will serve as a basis for defining additional requirements to the training material. In this guiding book, findings of the national surveying processes will be also described and made available for downloading.

Self-assessment tool for target groups: An internet-based competency self-assessment tool will be developed and tested on 10 members of each target group. Based on the results of the individually implemented self-assessments a comprehensive methodology will be elaborated to be able to tailor training modules according to strengths and weaknesses identified during the competency assessment.

Four interactive eLearning modules including:

• Biomass to energy e-learning module
• Renewable energy technology e-learning module
• Energy efficiency e-learning module
• Project management e-learning module