Barcelona, 2 May 2016 – The Association of the Mediterranean Chambers of Commerce and Industry (ASCAME), together with the Trama Tecno Ambiental (TTA) and the Cluster for the Internationalization and the Innovation of the Spanish Companies of Solar (Solartys) power and other associations, has carried out training courses of more than 30 engineers, 20 installers and 25 students in the design, installation and integration in buildings of photovoltaic plants. The courses implemented in the educational centre Salesians de Sarrià of Barcelona in April, have been developed in the framework of the European project FOSTEr in MED, which ASCAME is a principal partner.

With this initiative carried out in Spain, and five more countries of the Mediterranean, Italy, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunis and Jordan, the members of the project seek to promote the solar sector and to take advantage of the experience of companies with a long professional path to train new professionals. A total of 180 designers, 120 installers of SMEs and 150 university students have already benefited from these training programs at a regional level.

The recent global economic recession has shown the need to open up to new innovative and efficient growth models that appear to have been found in the clean energy. Sustainable development is a today unique business opportunity, with an expected investment of EUR 170.000 million in the Middle East and North Africa region in the coming years. In this sense, ASCAME has been working in the latest years on the promotion of renewable energies, especially solar energy, in a region with the highest solar radiation levels in the world, the Mediterranean.