Research Priorities for Renewable Energy Technology by 2020 and Beyond

Our partner EUREC, the European Renewable Energy Research Centres Agency, has launched this 45-page publication as the result of a very broad consultation of the European scientific community in renewable energy research.

EUREC Agency ran this consultation for 12 months from March 2008, asking European research centres (list of contributors at page 42) to provide with their view on the specific objectives and research areas where the European Union should invest in the next years to meet the 2020 objectives for renewable energy and climate change.

The research priorities have been grouped according to the end-user sector:

• The different technologies for renewable electricity production are at a different stage of development, but all require some R&D with a view to reducing their cost, and facilitate the integration into the grid to increase their consumption
• In order to increase the adoption of renewable energy technologies for heating and cooling in buildings, research should be addressed both to technical research advances and towards improving building technologies, and energy efficiency.
• In order to increase the use of renewable energy in transport applications, research is needed not only to improve the fuel production processes (feedstock production and conversion into a usable fuel), but also to create the requested infrastructure for the uptake of renewable-based fuels

Some cross-cutting issues also need to be tackled in order to enable a faster development of renewable energy technologies in all end-use sectors:

• Research infrastructures (especially laboratory infrastructures): the approach to European funding of energy infrastructures should be extended to allow the integration of European experimental facilities in order to overcome fragmentation
• There is a lack of finance for demonstration activities of new and improved renewable energy technologies. More demonstration is definitely necessary to bridge the gap between concept and implementation and a better financing scheme is needed
• Especially in the heating and cooling sector public funds need to be increased in order to fulfil the required research. This sector contributes to about 40% of the overall energy demand in Europe but the utilisation of renewable technologies remains low at present
• Lack of qualified and skilled workers (engineers, installers, academics) in energy: more efforts are essential in education at all levels. This includes not only specific studies for renewable energy as a course topic in itself, but more focus on renewable energy topics being included in electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, physics, and other traditional technical studies. More attention should be also placed in developing specialised post-graduate courses, such as the European Master in Renewable Energy coordinated by EUREC Agency