Applications for Intake 2027 open on 21 September, and the newest, most anticipated addition to the InnoEnergy Masters+ portfolio is finally open for applications: the Master’s in Advanced Energy Systems and AI. It’s been years in the making, built to answer a question the energy sector has been asking for a while now: who is actually training engineers who can do both AI and energy, properly, rather than one with a short course bolted onto the other?
Here’s what that means in practice, what you’d study, where, and why the pieces fit together the way they do.
Where this programme comes from
The redesign behind it is the work of AI4GreenDeal, a European Union-funded project under the Digital Europe Programme, coordinated by InnoEnergy. Its job is to close the specific AI skills gap the energy sector has identified, starting with an existing Master’s rather than inventing one from scratch. The consortium behind it brings together KU Leuven, Grenoble INP-UGA, UPC BarcelonaTech, KTH Royal Institute of Technology and Esade Business School, working alongside industry partners across the energy sector on the curriculum, the entrepreneurship track and the wider rollout of AI and data skills to energy professionals beyond the Master’s itself.
The gap this programme was built to close
As Frank Gielen, InnoEnergy’s Masters+ Director, said, the EU has named AI in energy a strategic priority under its Technological Sovereignty Package, backing it with close to €75 million through Horizon Europe. The bottleneck isn’t ambition. It’s people. A skills-gap analysis carried out with KU Leuven earlier this year mapped the distance between what energy engineering graduates currently learn and what employers are actually hiring for, and it came back with four specific gaps: broad AI literacy, digital thinking applied to energy problems, specialised algorithm knowledge, and the ability to work with the scale of data modern grids produce.
The Master’s in Advanced Energy Systems and AI was designed against that list, gap by gap, rather than as a general upgrade.
Built on a programme that already worked
The Master’s in Advanced Energy Systems and AI isn’t a new programme wearing an AI label. It’s the redesign of Energy for Smart Cities, an existing InnoEnergy Master’s that already combined energy engineering with energy economics, regulation and entrepreneurship. That foundation stays. What’s been added is a Data & AI theme running alongside it, with new mandatory and elective courses at each partner university and a joint course that brings the whole cohort together. You can read more about how the four partner universities and Esade co-designed the redesign in this piece on the AI4GreenDeal project.
Two years, two universities, one thesis
The structure is a 120 ECTS double degree split across two years. In Year 1, you build a common foundation in energy engineering, energy markets, and introductory AI, data science and Python, at one of four partner universities: KU Leuven (Belgium), KTH Royal Institute of Technology (Sweden), UPC BarcelonaTech (Spain), or Grenoble INP–UGA (France). In Year 2, you move to a different one of the four for your specialisation and your Master’s thesis, usually carried out with an industry or research partner from the InnoEnergy ecosystem:
- KU Leuven — AI and Smart Transmission Systems
- UPC BarcelonaTech — AI for Smart Distribution Grids
- KTH Royal Institute of Technology — AI for Energy Systems in Smart Cities
- Grenoble INP–UGA — AI for Distributed Energy Resources
All twelve entry-to-exit combinations are valid, so you choose both universities at application stage and build a pathway around where you want to specialise and which country you want to work in next.
The Esade track, and why it’s not an add-on
Across both years, you also follow a Business, Innovation & Entrepreneurship track built and taught by Esade Business School, which runs alongside the technical curriculum rather than after it. It’s structured around two profiles: building a new AI-driven venture, or leading innovation and transformation inside an existing organisation. AI is used deliberately in both: as what the curriculum calls a co-founder for the venture-building track (generating hypotheses, stress-testing business models, preparing investor materials) and as a change agent for the corporate-transformation track (modelling scenarios, mapping stakeholders, pressure-testing strategy).
The track culminates in a longitudinal Business, Innovation & Entrepreneurship Applied Project that runs the length of the programme: opportunity identification in Year 1, a validated business or transformation model by the end of that year, and a final investor- or client-ready pitch in Year 2. On completion, you receive a dedicated Esade certificate alongside your two university diplomas, bringing the total learning volume to 120 ECTS plus a 10 ECTS-equivalent Business, Innovation & Entrepreneurship certificate.
Who this is actually for
The Master’s in Advanced Energy Systems and AI is looking for a Bachelor’s in engineering, computer science, data science or a closely related STEM field, with a working foundation in at least two of electrical engineering, thermo-mechanical engineering, or programming and data analysis (Python, MATLAB or C/C++). If you’re strong in the energy side but light on the programming side, or the other way round, conditional admission with bridging modules is available before or during your first semester. You don’t need to already be fluent in both before you apply.
What comes after
Across the wider Masters+ network, 84% of graduates are employed in Europe within six months, supported by Careers+, which runs the internship placements, coaching and job board that connect students to over 200 partner companies. Graduates from this programme are the ones employers are searching for under titles like AI Energy Analyst, Energy Systems Data Scientist, and Energy Transition Consultant, the roles the skills-gap analysis was measuring against in the first place. You also graduate with the EIT Label, the European Institute of Innovation and Technology’s recognition for programmes that combine academic rigour with entrepreneurship training and genuine international mobility.
Round 1 opens on 21 September. The full programme page has the detailed curriculum, entry requirements and specialisation tracks; the application portal is where you’ll select your Year 1 and Year 2 universities.
Become the engineer who closes the gap between AI and energy
AI4GreenDeal is co-funded by the European Union under the DIGITAL programme, supporting Europe’s strategic priorities in advanced digital education, innovation and the green transition.