Support to the energy stakeholders to contribute to the SET-Plan

Topic description

Specific Challenge:

Major investments in research and innovation are needed to develop and deploy the technologies needed for the transformation towards a decarbonised energy system. To address such a significant investment challenge, it is fundamental that public and private stakeholders involved in the relevant sectors join their forces, agree on common objectives and align strategies for achieve them.

The European Technology Platforms bring together stakeholders from academia, industry, and civil society involved in the development of research and innovation strategies for energy technologies, and interacting with relevant public authorities of the Member States as well as the European Commission.

This topic calls for Coordination and Support Actions to assist the mission of certain of these European Technology Platforms in the field of energy in:

• contributing to the SET-Plan activities and strategy;
• helping define priorities, strategies, R&I investment decisions and programmes;
• collaborating between stakeholders in addressing energy system integration challenges;
• identifying technical and non-technical barriers to the delivery of innovation to the energy market;
• assisting the European Commission and Member States in defining the research programmes, financial instruments, and addressing the mentioned barriers;

in order to come to a coordinated, coherent, and efficient implementation of the objectives of the Energy Union including the 2030 Framework scenario and the 2050 Roadmap for a secure, affordable, competitive and efficient energy system.

Within the scope of this call, proposals are expected to address the coordination of stakeholders' activities as indicated above, as well as dissemination and networking towards stakeholder, and analysis and reporting for the purpose of monitoring and assessing progress towards research and innovation implementation plans of each sector

Proposals shall address one of the following specific energy technology sectors:

2016:

• Photovoltaics
• Ocean energy
• Zero emission fossil fuel power plants and energy intensive industry
• Biofuels

2017:

• Geothermal energy

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of around EUR 0.6 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately for a period of 2 years.

Up to one proposal for each technology area indicated above could be funded.

It is expected that an increased cohesion of the stakeholders involved in the sector will be reached through constructive and inclusive meetings, workshops, and conferences, and on the basis of the availability of scientifically sound, transparent and objective information for all interested parties. Moreover, stronger cooperation between stakeholders should enable agreement on concrete priorities, on longer term strategies, barriers to innovation and on better identification of the energy integration challenges. Increased communication between research, industry and civil society actors will facilitate exploitation of research results and hence the deployment of high-efficient and competitive low-carbon energy technologies. This will contribute to the SET-Plan, providing it with adequate input from a wide spectrum of stakeholders, facilitating the development and implementation of its different activities on a sound basis.

This activity directly aimed at supporting public-public partnerships with Member States and Associated Countries, technology platforms with industrial partners is excluded from the delegation to INEA and will be implemented by the Commission services.