SPIRE moves to build new R&I road map with new structure

On Monday 4 February the SPIRE PPP celebrated five years of hard work in which it has seen the launch of 89 projects with a combined budget of some EUR 900 million. The A.SPIRE General Assembly meeting elected Pierre Joris, a board member of a number of international process and chemical companies and previously a senior manager at Solvay, as the new Chairman of the SPIRE Board. Pierre takes over from Daniel Gauthier who had completed his two-year term as Chair. Pierre (right) and Daniel (left) are pictured below with SPIRE Executive Director Angels Orduña at the SPIRE celebration.

At the General Assembly SPIRE announced a range of changes required to translate its SPIRE 2050 Vision, released towards the end of 2018, into concrete research and innovation proposals through the development and publication of a SPIRE 2050 research and innovation road map.

The SPIRE 2050 Vision has been strongly endorsed by SPIRE members, stakeholders and the PPP’s partners at the European Commission and SPIRE now aims to have a solid plan to achieve the implementation of this ambitious vision through the forthcoming Horizon Europe programme and beyond.

The process of building the road map is now beginning and will kick-off officially in March with the aim of achieving a first draft during the Summer and finalising the document by November 2019.

SusChem will contribute to the formulation of the road map through work on its own new Strategic Innovation and Research Agenda, in particular in areas such as process technologies, industrial symbiosis and digitalisation, where SPIRE calls could be a channel to the realisation of projects.

New working groups

In order to facilitate the development of the new road map the A.SPIRE Board of Directors and its Industrial Research and Innovation Advisory Group (IRIAG) has initiated the setting up of seven new SPIRE Working Groups (WGs).

The seven working groups are:

• G1 - Energy Mix
• G2 - Electrification of Industrial Processes
• G3 - Use of Hydrogen
• G4 - Capture and Use of CO2
• G5 - Resource and Process Efficiency (and Flexibility)
• G6 - Industrial and Urban Symbiosis
• G7 – Digital (This WG was already established in autumn 2018)

The current SPIRE WGs (FEED, WASTE, PROCESS and APPLICATIONS.) will no longer be active, however the Advocacy group (aka the Outreach group) will be (re)activated.

A Steering Group will provide strategic guidance and manage the structure of the road map to ensure coherence with SPIRE 2050 Vision. In addition, a consulting company will be selected by A.SPIRE in early 2019 to support the WGs in the formulation of the road map.

WG members required

To populate the new Working Groups, SPIRE is calling for experts from its member organisations to get involved! Two types of expert input are required:

• Technical Experts to provide expertise in the topics addressed by the WGs. In addition, expertise in supply-chain structures and in the upstream and/or downstream related sectors is needed, in order to ensure an integrated approach and consider the wider trends and developments on related EU policies (e.g. Industry, Climate Change and Circular Economy).
• Specialists to provide strategic guidance and input, e.g. experts from companies or research organisations that hold positions to lead implementation strategies in the WG topic.

The new road map will provide an outlook up to 2050, divided into two parts: firstly, a more detailed part that will look into the investments required to reach market deployment within the time line of Horizon Europe, and then up to 2030; and secondly, a less detailed part that presents the plans of the process industries up to 2050.

After the road map exercise, the SPIRE WGs will remain active for the development of the Work Programmes under Horizon Europe.

Five year perspective

At the SPIRE celebration, the former Chair of A.SPIRE, Dr Klaus Sommer, delivered a video presentation outlining the origins of SPIRE, what the PPP has been achieved so far and what the future holds.