COMMUNICATING THE GREEN TRANSITION - Practices and Competencies for Engineers

The green transition is driving demand for engineering expertise in sectors such as renewable energy, construction, transport, and industrial decarbonisation. Projects are complex and interdisciplinary, and communication plays a central role. This report presents findings from 20 focus groups with 103 engineers across Europe examining how engineers communicate in green transition project contexts. Participants described a wide range of communicative tasks involving coordination, documentation, stakeholder engagement, and public communication.

Engineers work across spoken, written, and digital modes, shifting between formal and informal styles, and adapting to varied audiences. They must navigate fragmented tools and workflows, unclear goals and roles, jargon pitfalls, conflicting stakeholder agendas, and interpersonal and cross-cultural frictions—especially in multilingual, distributed teams.

The report identifies a broad, interconnected framework of competencies required for effective communication in green transition engineering. These include digital fluency, audience-centred message design, emotional and social intelligence, negotiation and crisis communication, interdisciplinary and inclusive collaboration, strategic advocacy, and communication governance. Each competency is described within a broader ecosystem of communicative practice, linked to specific means, contexts, and core skills rather than treated
in isolation. This integrated structure supports a holistic approach to instructional design, enabling educators to derive context-specific learning outcomes and “can-do” statements tailored to professional realities.
While grounded in real-world practice, the findings reflect local interpretations and methodological constraints.
Further research should build on this work through lifecycle analysis, communication mapping, and relevant theoretically informed approaches. The growing influence of generative AI on engineering tasks also adds urgency to this agenda, as communication demands continue to evolve.