Oulu’s New H2Koulu Pre­pares Experts for an Emerg­ing Indus­try

Fin­land has high hopes for the hydro­gen econ­o­my, but skilled pro­fes­sion­als are still scarce. To address this, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oulu, Oulu Uni­ver­si­ty of Applied Sci­ences, and the OSAO edu­ca­tion con­sor­tium have devel­oped a com­pre­hen­sive edu­ca­tion­al pro­gram cov­er­ing all lev­els of edu­ca­tion to train future hydro­gen experts.

Oulu, known for its tech­nol­o­gy sec­tor, is now aim­ing to train new pro­fes­sion­als for the hydro­gen econ­o­my, which plays a cru­cial role in achiev­ing Finland’s car­bon neu­tral­i­ty goals by reduc­ing the need for fos­sil fuels and thus car­bon emis­sions.

The H2Koulu project, coor­di­nat­ed by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oulu, includes a vari­ety of cours­es on hydro­gen pro­duc­tion, stor­age, and dis­tri­b­u­tion. The pro­gram aims to equip stu­dents and pro­fes­sion­als with the nec­es­sary skills to han­dle hydro­gen safe­ly and effec­tive­ly, con­tribut­ing to the devel­op­ment of hydro­gen infra­struc­ture both local­ly and nation­wide. The ini­tia­tive includes an intro­duc­to­ry online course avail­able to every­one, as well as spe­cial­ized cours­es for stu­dents at dif­fer­ent edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions. This pro­gram is designed to build hydro­gen exper­tise with­out requir­ing a full degree.

Col­lab­o­ra­tion enhances the exper­tise of edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions. The uni­ver­si­ty focus­es on research and the­o­ry, while poly­tech­nics and voca­tion­al schools have more prac­ti­cal knowl­edge and under­stand­ing of busi­ness needs. The city of Oulu plays an impor­tant role in the cre­ation of new train­ing pro­grams. One goal of the Oulu Inno­va­tion Alliance (OIA), coor­di­nat­ed by the city, is to ensure that the Oulu region has the exper­tise need­ed for future skills require­ments.

Experts for Oulu, Ben­e­fits for All of Fin­land

The hydro­gen econ­o­my is part of the green tran­si­tion and brings new busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties, invest­ments, and tax rev­enues to com­pa­nies. Fin­land has the poten­tial to become a lead­ing coun­try in the field inter­na­tion­al­ly, and com­pa­nies have been inter­est­ed in hydro­gen for years. Oulu has a long tra­di­tion of hydro­gen research and edu­ca­tion, mak­ing it nat­ur­al to offer edu­ca­tion at all lev­els and start­ing points.

The university’s task is to pro­duce the lat­est research infor­ma­tion for the use of cit­i­zens and busi­ness­es. Teach­ing is one way to ensure this. As long as the tech­nol­o­gy is not famil­iar to the gen­er­al pub­lic, its uti­liza­tion may remain mar­gin­al. Oulu is part of the Innokaupun­ki net­work. H2koulu imple­ments Oulu’s goal of sus­tain­able cir­cu­lar econ­o­my and clean solu­tions, includ­ing next-gen­er­a­tion ener­gy solu­tions.

Read more: Oulun uusi H2Koulu valmis­taa osaa­jia alalle, joka on vas­ta syn­tymässä – Oulu

Source: Oulun Inno­vaa­tioal­lianssi (OIA)