La Solive, the Energy Renovation Training Center, Comes to Marseille

Marseille is the fourth campus opened by La Solive in France

After Paris, Lyon, and Nantes, the energy renovation training leader La Solive is launching a campus in Marseille in January 2025. La Solive, which caters to people undergoing job retraining, is helping to provide skilled workers for this fast-growing sector. The Marseille campus, which will serve the South of France, is receiving support and networking contacts from Provence Promotion.

In response to the shortage of qualified personnel in the energy renovation sector, which is expected to triple in size between 2023 and 2030, La Solive offers training courses for people undergoing professional reorientation. At the end of a three- to six-month course, they can become energy renovation project managers, heating technicians, heat pump installers, solar panel installers, or energy renovation advisors.

The concept was successfully tested in Paris in 2021 and is expanding across France with the imminent opening of the fourth campus in Marseille. “It’s a city where there’s a lot at stake in terms of building renovation. One of our investors put us in touch with the team at Provence Promotion. The agency opened the doors to the business ecosystem and helped us connect with Euroméditerranée, the Chamber of Commerce, the Chambre des Métiers et de l’Artisanat, the Capenergies cluster, the Fédération du Bâtiment, the City of Marseille, local stakeholders, financiers, and France Travail for training funding,” says Ariane Komorn, who co-founded La Solive alongside Côme de Cossé Brissac.

“Our ambition is to train 400 to 500 people a year.”

Following the launch of regional campuses in Lyon and Nantes, Marseille will open its doors in early 2025. The first training course for energy renovation project management will start on January 13 at the Biaggi campus, which is already home to the EMD Business School.

At the start of the new academic year in September 2025, La Solive will take up its permanent home in a 700-square-meter facility that combines spaces for theoretical teaching with a technical platform for hands-on training.

“We’re aiming to train 400 to 500 people a year, starting in 2026-2027,” emphasizes Jeanne Latil Flamme, the director of the Marseille campus. La Solive has big ambitions with its regional deployment strategy. “We plan to open around ten campuses in France. The next one will be in Toulouse in April 2025. We have already trained over a thousand people as part of their career transition. 91% of them have found a job on completion of their training,” notes Ariane Komorn. There are job opportunities with Le Solive’s more than 600 partner companies (Leroy Merlin, Izi by EDF…), so people undergoing retraining can be confident in finding employment. According to the latest report from France Stratégie and the Dares government statistic agency, 635 000 jobs will need to be filled in France between 2022 and 2030 as part of the energy transition.