Europe’s Energy Future

Competitive, secure and sustainable energy is vital for a thriving European economy and society. In the aftermath of the ambitious European Commission goal-setting for 2030, a high-level round table addressing the current fragmentation challenges and the promises of innovative technologies in the energy sector will place policy targets on the path to implementation. This discussion will take place on 19 March 2014 at the European Parliament in Brussels hosted by Mr. Jerzy Buzek MEP, Chairman of the Knowledge for Innovation (K4I) Forum.

The meeting entitled ‘Europe’s Energy Future: Efficiency and competitiveness through smart integration’ will examine the EU’s ambitious 2030 energy targets. These will only be meaningful if we manage the sustainable integration of a portfolio of energy technologies, elevate the current level of debate and action to broader concepts across sectors and national / regional activities and their implications on sustainability and competitiveness, and consider the significant recent changes in global context including emerging economies, access to energy supply, dependency, technological leadership, and Europe’s role and needs.

 The key note speech will be made by Günther H. Oettinger, European Commissioner for Energy, with contributions from: Dominique Ristori, Director-General at DG Energy; András Siegler, Director of Energy at DG Research and Innovation; Gernot Klotz Executive Director Research and Innovation, CEFIC; Pedro de Sampaio Nunes Head of Secretariat, EUREKA; David Salisbury President of the European Gas Research Group (GERG); and Gabriel Marquette General Manager of EUROGIA 2020: the EUREKA cluster for low-carbon energy technologies.

This high-level round table could mark the setting of some new directions for a more efficient articulation of a sustainable European energy system highlighting new business models, new opportunities and synergies.

Both SusChem and SPIRE have and continue to contribute chemical innovations to the sustainable energy sector and have leading roles to play in development of new low-carbon technologies.

Scope and issues
The EU needs new, high performance low-cost, low-carbon sustainable energy technologies to be brought to the market. However, the greatest impact of these technologies in terms of delivery on policy goals, competitiveness and efficiency will be achieved through an integrated strategy for innovation in the energy area.

The Integrated Energy Roadmap puts forward an action plan that addresses the energy challenges in a system approach, consolidates and aligns the various individual technology roadmaps, covers the entire research and innovation chain, and identifies pathways for work and synergies between various programmes, stakeholders, instruments and authorities.

However, the roadmap needs to practically address a series of existing challenges for implementation including how and what to prioritise short-term versus medium-term and long-term, what we can learn from each other across sectors, borders, and along value chain, how to create synergies among different instruments, different sectors, different technologies, and how to balance (sometimes competing) targets considering technological, economic, environmental and social aspects.

More information
Further information on the event can be found on the K4I website.