In 2021, the international student project Energy Challenge (formerly Youth Day) took place for the seventh time. The goal of the project is to provide an interactive platform that unites leading industry experts and talented students from all over the world to transfer knowledge about the energy business and find new ideas and solutions.
The organizers and partners of the project are Higher Economic School of St. Petersburg State University of Economics (HES UNECON), International Business Congress (IBC), PJSC Gazprom, Uniper SE, Wintershall Dea AG, OMV AG, N.V. Nederlandse Gasunie, Energy Delta Institute, ESMT Berlin and Expoforum.
The participants are students from different universities of the world, leading industry experts and top managers of international energy companies, as well as representatives of the academic community.
The project includes two stages: the online educational program of Virtual Academy and events of Youth Day as part of St. Petersburg International Gas Forum (SPIGF), which has the status of IBC’s working project.
The first educational part of Energy Challenge 2021, the Virtual Academy (VA), is almost completed. The last webinar of the third educational module has just finished, but the participants still have two weeks for finishing their individual final challenge. The project organizers from the Higher Economic School of St. Petersburg State University of Economics (HES UNECON) summarize the preliminary results.
On April 26, the Virtual Academy, the first stage of the Energy Challenge project, was launched. Its topic is “Embracing Uncertainty with 3D”.
Virtual Academy is a three-month educational online program including three study modules. In each module, experts from the partner companies give classes on various energy topics. As part of the program, participants must complete two tasks and prepare their final individual project. At the end of the Virtual Academy, the best participants will be invited to St. Petersburg for the in-person Youth Day events to be held at the St. Petersburg International Gas Forum.
December 3, the annual international student event Youth Day 2020 started wThe Opening Ceremony of the annual international student event Youth Day 2020 took place on the 3rd of December, which top 50 graduates of the Virtual Academy from 31 universities, representing 11 countries, take part in.
The Virtual Academy, the first stage of the Energy Challenge 2.0 project has just been completed. The expert group has finished assessing the student research projects, and now we can sum up the results.
For three months, April 15 – July 10, 270 students representing 75 universities of 22 countries studied online on the educational program “Energy 2020: Back to the Future” based on the UNECON distance learning platform.
The Energy Challenge team from the Higher Economic School of UNECON carried out serious expert and organizational work and prepared three training modules.
May 27 – June 17 the third training module was held at the Virtual Academy of the Energy Challenge project. The Academy participants, together with industry experts, had to determine what kinds of policies, strategies, and investment decisions should be taken right now on a corporate level to ensure our safe and sustainable future.
The webinar program of Module 3 covered a wide range of topics offered by partner companies:
May 27, the second study module was completed at the Virtual Academy of the Energy Challenge project. It was dedicated to the topic of “Foresight, a look into the future”. VA participants together with experts tried to determine the trends and technologies, which will form the foundation of our energy future for the next 20-30.
The webinar program of Module 2 was even more intense:
April 15, 2020 we started the Virtual Academy, the first stage of the Energy Challenge 2.0 project, organized by Higher Economic School of UNECON.
The first training module was held from April 15 to May 6. It was dedicated to the hindsight in order to summarize and compare the expectations and results of the major energy events and trends since the beginning of XXI.
