The Middle East countries are going through a period of change where governments are forced to address the need for greater access to economic opportunity. With a challenging economic environment and a growing social demand, governments believe that subsidy reform especially in energy and food might help reconcile social protection and secure fiscal positions. With almost $17 billion spending every year in Egypt and $2.3 billion spending every year in Jordan, Egyptian and Jordanian governments are undergoing an extremely difficult transition where energy subsidies will be lifted gradually. Not only will the government’s economic profile be reformed, it is also believed that the public opinion and vision to energy management and saving will be affected accordingly.

This project main objective is to increase public awareness and utilization of renewables, promote for energy saving and management, as well as develop new research areas in those fields. Based on surveys and questionnaires from previous projects Clean Energy and Research in Environmental Studies (CERES) (517401-TEMPUS-1-2011-1-ESTEMPUS-JPCR) and Master on Sustainable development and Renewable energy (MANSUR) (511069-TEMPUS-1-2010-1-IT-TEMPUS-JPCR), a solid conclusion for the establishment and developing a training course and a master program was evident. The project will have a broad scope of goals which targets academic, industrial and civilian sectors, and the consortium partners.

On the academic level, 4 universities from EU, namely: SU, UNIOVI, IST and UCY Universities and along with 4 EG universities, namely: AAST, ASU, HU, NU and 3 Jordanian Universities: University of Jordan, Mutah university and JUST are to work on the preparation of the new MSc degree and training program. Being supported by Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) in UK, KTP will help spreading the business and technical skills to academia and at the same time enhance research opportunities thus bridging between universities and industry. On the industrial level, ALEXSEEDS is a leading company specialized in a variety of food products in Egypt. Their main contribution to the consortium will be through providing a good case study and a real-life feedback experience in the field of energy and cost saving, energy consumption as well as process efficiency enhancement. They will be sharing and contributing through surveys from an industrial point of view. Another main contributor to the consortium is EUROTraining through enhancing the organizational effectiveness of the project. Being officially experienced in the area of management and quality control, they be internally monitoring the progress of the whole project.