Current Project: Regional Renewables Alliance
Overview
The RLS Energy Network established the Regional Renewables Alliance in order to jointly conduct research on the combination of vast resources of renewable energy resource with state-of-the-art energy conversion and storage technologies.
The technological leadership of the partner regions in the renewable energy sector offers an opportunity to support regional energy transitions. RLS regions with large territories provide enormous resources of wind, water, solar and biomass. Storage and transportation into highly populated regions through logistic structures can impede renewable energy shortages in these regions. Key technologies are technologies for renewable energy storage in gases and as liquid fuels, e.g. power-to-X, biofuels, or hydrogen.
Providing favourable conditions for the future of the world’s energy production, transport and storage – with the need for economic, stable and sustainable energy sources – is a major challenge for research in the present as well as in the upcoming years.
The technological leadership of the partner regions in the renewable energy sector offers an opportunity to support regional energy transitions. RLS regions with large territories provide enormous resources of wind, water, solar and biomass. Storage and transportation into highly populated regions through logistic structures can impede renewable energy shortages in these regions. Key technologies are technologies for renewable energy storage in gases and as liquid fuels, e.g. power-to-X, biofuels, or hydrogen.
Providing favourable conditions for the future of the world’s energy production, transport and storage – with the need for economic, stable and sustainable energy sources – is a major challenge for research in the present as well as in the upcoming years.
Roadmap: Work Packages
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To organize their work, the Regional Renewables Alliance jointly produced a roadmap, which lays out how they will work towards developing multilateral projects on renewable energies across the seven partner regions. This roadmap has six Work Packages (WP), of which four are currently in progress.
The roadmap for the Regional Renewables Alliance started with a preparatory stage. This first stage will indicate the most promising technologies and implementation strategies in order to prepare an implementation and demonstration phase. The preparatory stage will create and widen networks, personal contacts and promote the exchange of knowledge, technologies and human resources between the partners. Workshops and conferences will bring key players together and will define rules and funding schemes for the roadmaps final implementation and demonstration phase. |
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In order to facilitate the preparation of joint transnational research and innovation projects and to promote the joint development of key technologies for global renewable gas and fuels markets between the partner regions, first steps will include:
- Investigate the status and potentials of renewable energies (WP 2, “Monitoring report”)
- Establish a “Energy systems analysis” and a “Regional Science and Technology map” of the partner regions (WP 3 and WP 4)
- Implement a cooperation on the training courses, scholarship and summer schools (WP 5)
Current Roadmap Progress
The RRA has prepared its first Monitoring Report (WP 2) under the coordination of the Energieinstitut at the Johannes Kepler University of Linz. Review it here.
The inaugural Summer School of the RRA (WP 5) was held from 9 until 18 May, 2018 in Shawinigan and Québec under the co-coordination of the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Nature et technologies (FRQNT) and Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières (UQTR).
A SWOT Analysis (WP 4) is being undertaken for the seven partner regions under the coordination of Energieinstitut at the Johannes Kepler University of Linz.
A match-making database of solar energy researchers across the seven regions (WP 4 and WP 6) is being prepared under the coordination of GreenCape.
Thematic clusters are being identified and visualized (WP 4).
The inaugural Summer School of the RRA (WP 5) was held from 9 until 18 May, 2018 in Shawinigan and Québec under the co-coordination of the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Nature et technologies (FRQNT) and Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières (UQTR).
A SWOT Analysis (WP 4) is being undertaken for the seven partner regions under the coordination of Energieinstitut at the Johannes Kepler University of Linz.
A match-making database of solar energy researchers across the seven regions (WP 4 and WP 6) is being prepared under the coordination of GreenCape.
Thematic clusters are being identified and visualized (WP 4).