EASE EU Projects Milestones in 2020

The involvement in EU-funded projects is beneficial to organisations focusing on research and innovation and wishing to bring their existing solutions closer to the wider European market, and to engage in fruitful international synergies. For many years, EASE has participated in EU-funded research and demonstration projects related to energy storage and has facilitated the access of its members to such funds.

With the challenges brought by the COVID-19 pandemic, EASE had to adapt some of the activities performed within the framework of EU-funded projects to make sure that the topic addressed stayed relevant. We worked hard to turn challenges into opportunities, organising and shaping discussions around funding, policy and technology.

Below, some of the key milestones of EASE’s work in EU-funded projects in 2020:

Policy Discussions: SMARTSPEND, ASSET and TSO2020

For the SMARTSPEND project, aimed at promoting improved public and private funding design for clean energy technologies, a full-day workshop was organised by EASE. The event covered how funding will change with the arrival of new or reshaped programmes and with the developments brought by the Recovery Fund. Interesting points were put forward by the European Commission, such as the importance of public funding in paving the way for private investments, while industry representatives underlined the need to funnel the resources available for research from now on.

The ASSET project focuses on the actions needed from policy, research, and industry to foster the development of skills for the energy transition. EASE organised an online European Roadshow for the project, addressing how policy can feed the demand for energy transition skills and how industry and research can collaborate to supply them. While Member States are in charge of education, the EU will play a central role in the next years thanks to the European Skills Agenda, a plan that to support the sustainable competitiveness set out by the European Green Deal.

In November, EASE organised a Policy Roundtable for TSO2020, which demonstrates large-scale deployment of green hydrogen for transport and industry. The Roundtable focused on how to make the best out of the hydrogen momentum brought by the recent Hydrogen Strategy. Participants underlined the need for policy to support the competitive advantage of Europe on the production of electrolysers and on the enlargement of existing infrastructure across the EU.

Publications: Battery2030+, ETIP SNET and Batteries Europe

EASE has contributed to Battery2030+’s long-term research Roadmap, tackling the actions needed for the future batteries. The Roadmap addresses not only the acceleration of technology breakthroughs, but also the integration of smart functionalities and cross-cutting topics for the value chain, and has helped shape the scope of five funding calls released under Horizon2020.

2020 has brought important achievements for the two European Technology and Innovation Platforms EASE is part of: Batteries Europe has published a list of R&I topics for the entire value chain in Spring, as well as a Strategic Research Agenda at the end of the year, which will help to shape the upcoming Horizon Europe framework. The ETIP SNET published an Implementation Plan giving detailed recommendations on R&I priorities to be addressed before 2024 on six main research areas– based on the Roadmap 2020-2030 also released this year.

EASE is thankful for the collaborations which made these milestones happen. 2020 has been an exceptional year in which our projects kept going, sometimes needing adapt to the new present, in order to be one step ahead in the future.