Faq

A:  SMARTSPEND is a 3-year, EU-funded project running until 30 November 2021. Companies, national governments and the European Commission all want to invest in clean energy Research & Development. SMARTSPEND aims to find new ways to coordinate and increase those investments.

A:  SMARTSPEND’s main objectives are to foster efficiency in the allocation of public & private funding to energy R&D, and to better inform stakeholders of the possibilities for technologies to work together or to address matters of common concern together. The visible way that SMARTSPEND will do this is by producing and disseminating six reports related to the synergies that exist between different technologies and reports that describe the financing available for technology development and gaps in finance provision. SMARTSPEND will also engage with policy makers directly and indirectly.

A:  SMARTSPEND Synergies Pillar collects all the actions to boost the collaboration and development of cross thematic synergies among actors interested in bringing new clean energy innovations to the market. These actions will be showcased in two reports. The first report, Report on Overlapping Interests, will be a description of the common ground between non-nuclear energy Implementation Plans of the SET PLAN: the report will screen points of common interest between energy technologies, common interests in financing for innovation and other non-technological issues. The second report, produced mid-way through the project and (updated) at the end is called Synergies Exploited. It will focus on how each Implementation Working Group has managed to use the first report. SMARTSPEND will set up a series of interviews with Implementation Working Group leaders to get their feedback.

A:  SMARTSPEND’s Financial Strategies Pillar consists of reviewing European funding instruments for clean energy innovation, matching those funding instruments against the industry’ needs and collecting the most important findings. SMARTSPEND will prepare four reports on these actions: The first report will map the funding instruments for energy innovation. The second report will analyse industry’s funding needs. The third report will propose recommendations for alternative models for energy technologies to represent themselves at EU-level: the advantages and disadvantages of various forms of European Partnership will be assessed. And the fourth report, built in part on the conclusions of the Access to Risk Finance conference, will give recommendations on supporting innovation in energy technology.

A:  Sure! SMARTSPEND invites all organisations creating innovative energy technologies to get involved in SMARTSPEND national high-level meetings with experts and policy representatives. Do you want to know more? Send us an email to info@smartspend.eu SMARTSPEND also invites everybody curious about the progress of the project to stay informed by subscribing to SMARTSPEND mailing list, which will bring you SAMRTSPEND latest news & events.

A:  SMARTSPEND consortium is composed by eleven partners chosen because of their links to companies and research centres in particular clean energy fields. This will allow the results of the project to be disseminated widely. SMARTSPEND partners and sectors:

• EUREC – The Association of European Renewable Energy Research Centres: scientific coordinator
• CIRCE Foundation – Centre of Research for Energy Resources and Consumption: process industry
• EASE – European Association for Storage of Energy: energy storage
• ECTP – European Construction Technology Platform: energy-efficient buildings and construction
• EGEC – European Geothermal Energy Council: geothermal energy
• EMIRI – Energy Materials Industrial Research Initiative: advanced materials for clean energy and clean mobility technologies
• ESTELA – European Solar Thermal Electricity Association: Concentrated Solar Power
• Ocean Energy Europe: Ocean Energy
• The German Agency for Renewable Resources – FNR: bioenergy
• WIP Renewable Energies, administrative coordinator: photovoltaics
• ZABALA Innovation Consulting: smart energy networks

A:  SMARTSPEND organised the Online Workshop “Financing Clean Energy Transition in the Context of EU Recovery” on the 30th September 2020 and rescheduled its conference for 2021, whether it will be online or in person is still to be confirmed. The Conference on Access to Risk Finance will gather private sector financiers, energy research centres and companies, and policy makers in charge of public financing of funding schemes. The main objectives of this high-profile public conference will be:

• A greater understanding by the energy community of the availability and conditions of finance from the finance providers
• A greater awareness of those providers of the energy community’s needs

A:  Under the Synergies Pillar, SMARTSPEND will interview the leaders of the 13 Implementation Working Groups to collect their statements and integrate them in the report ‘Synergies exploited’. This report is foreseen by 2019 and will be updated in 2021. For this reason, SMARTSPEND will coordinate the so-called mid-term Interviews, midway through the project, and a series of ‘Closing interviews’ by the end of the project, in order to update the final ‘Synergies report’.