investment decisions.
Energy materials Research Infrastructures
Energy technologies with their high and rapidly changing technical demands are particularly dependent on fast innovations in the structural and functional materials sector. Markets for materials for energy and environmental applications are expected to grow at an above average rate. At European level the topic is, for example, addressed as part of the “SET-Plan Roadmap Materials for Low Carbon Technologies”, the EERA-JP AMPEA section on
Characterization platforms and the industrial initiative EMIRI46.
43SET-Plan, Towards an Integrated Roadmap: Research and Innovation Challenges and Needs of the EU Energy System, “This document is an overview of the inputs from the stakeholders to the consultation in the framework of the development of the SET-Plan Integrated Roadmap; it also includes comments and additional inputs from the SET-Plan Steering Group, which endorsed it at its meeting of 13th November 2014.” 44 Council Regulation 1314/2013/EURATOM on the Research and Training Programme of the European Atomic Energy Community (2014-2018)
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The energy materials research exploits large-scale European facilities, such as the synchrotrons ESFRI Landmark
ESRF UPGRADES , PSI, DESY, Diamond, ALBA, Soleil, BESSY, ANKA, Elettra, and the neutron facilities ESFRI Landmark ILL 20/20 , ISIS, FRM-2 Munich, SINQ and electron microscopes. Large cross-sectional RI and research
platforms explicitly dedicated to R&D for energy materials are nevertheless still scarce47 and fragmented. The
energy materials sector would therefore benefit greatly from concerted R&D efforts and common methodological approaches in these fields. Covering length scales from atomic structure to macroscopic engineering components and for time scales ranging from sub-picoseconds up to the lifetime of energy systems of tens of years should also include life cycle experiments, ageing and non-equilibrium loads. The future of characterization is expected to not only include individual techniques which are pushed to their limits, but also a situation where the community devises synergistic strategies employing a range of cutting-edge characterization methods to address complex multiscale problems in materials and systems. There is a particularly strong need to develop techniques for in situ and in operando studies of energy materials and components during operation, e.g. for electrochemical and electronic materials and devices. The objective of computational materials science, chemistry and nanoscience is to create new materials or chemical agents. Here dedicated HPC is needed in the analysis of materials properties and in simulating complex 3D dynamic transport, reaction processes and ageing.
The European Technology Platform for High Performance Computing (ETP4HPC), and the ESFRI Landmark PRACE (e-RI) facilitate high-impact scientific discovery and engineering research and development across all disciplines. Quite a number of cross-disciplinary energy-relevant topics are addressed like exploration of natural resources; lean combustion technology, fluid turbulence, power and waste management; photovoltaics and new materials design, fusion reactor modelling or energy market modelling via high-resolution renewable energy production forecasts. The multi-disciplinarity of energy-related themes means that it is difficult to identify a “community” for this field at first sight. The task of integrating activities with the objective of developing and applying scale- bridging approaches to studying materials, processes and functionalities of whole devices from microscopic to macroscopic scales currently lack detailed information flow and concerted action. A new Centre of Excellence for energy-related topics, working closely with associated experimental and industrial groups, is expected to have a multiscale integrating character and contribute filling this gap along with databases and research platforms.
RIs for exploring Economic, Environmental and Social Impacts of Energy Systems
Energy systems analysis (ESA) is based on exploring and modelling the impact of a number of key data and indicators –socio-economic, environmental as well as technological – on the transformation of the energy system. In contrast to other research fields, RIs in ESA mainly have the character of virtual infrastructures such as networks, archives and databases. Currently, transnational examples of such infrastructures are scarce and, as in other fields of the social sciences, access is often restricted to the national community.
The main bottlenecks in the research field are therefore: a) combining and harmonizing/standardizing scattered national data in energy systems analysis; b) tailoring existing data infrastructures in the field of economics, environment, policy and sociology according to energy system research demands and c) strengthening the modelling capacities by methodological exchange.
Another important task would be to internationally harmonize data, definitions and representations of energy markets. The availability of such a database would be a big step towards harmonizing the sustainability assessment of energy technologies and systems and for the development of consolidated energy scenarios. This knowledge is key to further political decisions and to determining the immense investments needed in the energy sector in coming years.
45 In a tokamak or a stellarator, a divertor is a reactor component where plasma particles and energy are evacuated. 46 https://emiri.eu/
LANDSCAPE ANALYSIS