STAGE-STE Workshop

After 4 years acting as a bridge between research institutions and Solar Thermal Electricity (STE) industry, the STAGE-STE project has come to its last phase.
A closing open workshop will be organised on the 23rd January 2018 at the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) in Brussels so to bring the main projects results in the wider perspective of the current situation of the CSP/STE sector in Europe and the expected developments.

Among a few ‘pioneering’ EU-funded projects bridging research institutions and the CSP/STE industry in Europe, STAGE-STE project partners (*) in 19 countries, i.e. hundreds of high-level scientists and experts contributed to define several action lines along the entire value chain of the sector (material, performance optimization of components, etc..).

This means that the project also delivered substantial input to the “Initiative for Global Leadership in Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) / Solar Thermal Electricity (STE)” that was recently approved by the SET-Plan.

The practical implementation of this Initiative will soon bind in a coherent process across member states several important research projects anticipated by STAGE-STE and already evaluated by the industry as most likely to bring a competitive / innovative advantage with the realisation of a First-of-A-Kind (FOAK) commercial project in STE in Europe.

The workshop will address:

The link between the activities of European R&D; centres active in the sector and the need for a home CSP/STE market in Europe;

Why, amid of extremely rapid cost reductions for CSP/STE for plants built outside Europe and the resulting threat of losing CSP/STE technology leadership to non-Europeans, EU member states are called to provide a better framework in terms of research support, financing conditions and market design

Why CSP/STE technology is today available as the most competitive CO2-free solution to deliver bulk amounts of flexible power system.

We expect that sharing the STAGE-STE results with a wider range of stakeholders from EU institutions and member states will help better understanding what is at stake with the CSP/STE in Europe and thus improve the support to implementation of the Initiative across member states.

We invite you to attend and actively bring in both comments and reactions in the discussions during our roundtable discussion about the future of the sector and the most efficient actions to keep both research and industry in Europe.

Deadline for registration: 15 January 2018

Venue: European Economic and Social Committee (EESC); Room VMA3; Rue Van Maerlant 2, 1000 Brussels.

WORKSHOP PROGRAM

09:15 – 09:30	Brief welcome and introductory speeches Pierre Jean Coulon Piero de Bonis
09:30 – 10:00	Sector view from Commission and SET-Plan (two speakers, 15 min. each). Piotr Tulej Inmaculada Figueroa
10:00 – 10:30	Global (worldwide) context of RTD activities (two speakers, 15 min. each). Julián Blanco Manuel Collares
10:30 – 11:00	The view from the industry. Global context (two speakers, 15 min. each). Luis Crespo José Alfonso Nebrera
11:00 – 11:30	Coffee-break.
11:30 – 12:00	Key contributions of STAGE-STE research activities (two speakers, 15 min. each). Eduardo Zarza Peter Heller
12:00 – 12:30	Key contributions of STAGE-STE coordination activities (two speakers, 15 min. each). Costas Papanicolas Werner Platzer
12:30 – 13:15	“What next?” round table. Open discussion with the audience about needed immediate and short-term actions.

The event will be conducted by Adel El Gammal (EERA General Secretary) as Master of Ceremonies.

SPEAKERS

Pierre Jean Coulon

Pierre Jean Coulon is the President of the Section "Transport, Energy, Infrastructure and Information Society" of the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC). At the same time, Mr Coulon serves as a Special Advisor for European and International Affairs of the French Confederation of Christian Workers (CFTC). Previously, he was active as President of the international non-governmental organisation Right to Energy SOS Future, as well as an expert adviser to the United Nations. He also held several management positions in energy companies.
Mr Coulon has been a member of the EESC since 2010, representing the Group of Employees. As a member of the Section for External Relations (REX) and the Section for Transport, Energy, Infrastructure and the Information Society (TEN), he has played an active part in the meetings and work on a number of Committee opinions. In the energy field, he served as rapporteur in opinions on the Energy Union framework and the Energy Roadmap 2050, energy storage, energy poverty, energy research and technologies, the internal energy market, as well as the involvement of civil society in EU energy policy and governance. He is also member of the Steering Committee of the European Nuclear Energy Forum (ENEF).

Piotr Tulej

Head of Unit 'Renewable Energy Sources'
Directorate-General for Research and Innovation
European Commission
In his current post at the Directorate-General Research and Innovation, Piotr Tulej oversees formulation of policies and strategies for renewable energy and contributes to the European Research Area in this field. He works on the development of research policy and provides input to wider EU policy issues in demand of scientific response. In his earlier assignments at the European Commission he was responsible for the implementation of the European Emission Trading System, the development of the Effort Sharing Decision, the Directive for Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) and the NER300 Programme for co-financing of demonstration of innovative energy projects.
Previously, he was the Head of Renewable Energy Unit of the International Energy Agency (IEA). Earlier he worked at the Netherlands Agency for Innovation and Sustainable Development (SenterNovem), the International Institute for Energy Conservation and Johnson Controls Inc. He began his professional career in research and development.

Piero De-Bonis

Piero holds a degree in Environmental Sciences from the University of Milano. He previously worked at the Italian Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Environment and for the Italian oil company. He joined the European Commission in 2010 and since then he has been Policy Officer for concentrating solar power (CSP) at the Directorate-General for Research & Innovation. Since 2013 he has been also Policy Officer for Solar Heating and Cooling.

Inmaculada Figueroa

Inmaculada represents Spain on behalf of MINECO to SET-Plan SG since 2011, beig member of its Bureau. She has chaired the Temporary Working Group that has concluded with the Implementatin Plan endorsed by the Steering Group the 27th of October 2017.
She is also representative on behalf of Spain to ESFRI (European Strategy Forum for Research Infrastructures) and member of its Executive Committee. She chairs the Board of Ministerial Representatives which are working for the EU-Solaris implementation.

Luis Crespo

Luis Crespo, (PhD Aeronautical Engineer and Sociologist) is currently President of ESTELA and PROTERMOSOLAR (European and Spanish STE associations) and member of the Renewable Industry Advisory Board of the IEA. He was pioneer at the Almeria Solar Platform, involved in the central receiver plant of the IEA and in the GAST German-Spanish project. Afterwards he was appointed Director of Spanish Renewable Energy Institute in CIEMAT.
Later on, he moved to the management and financing sectors becoming deputy Director of CDTI, General Director of AENTEC and General Director of CEX (Venture Capital).
He is also professor at the Polytechnic University of Madrid in Energy and Business Administration fields and consultant of governments and financial multilateral institutions such as WB and ADB.

José Alfonso Nebrera

José Alfonso Nebrera, (General Manager of ACS COBRA) has a BA in Industrial Engineering from the Seville Engineering School and an MA in Business Administration from IESE Business School, Madrid.
He’s been General Manager of ACS COBRA since 2004.
Former President of the European Solar Thermal Electricity Association ESTELA and now Vice President.
Vice President of Friends of the Supergrid.

Julián Blanco

Dr. Julian Blanco, (Industrial Engineer by Seville Univ. and Ph.D. by the Univ. of Almeria) is the Associated Director of Plataforma Solar de Almeria (PSA) and also currently leading the EERA Joint Program on CSP and the STAGE-STE IRP. With H index of 40, he is author/coauthor of 94 peer-reviewed SCI publications, 10 full books as well as 24 chapters in others. He also has 5 patents and a large number of keynotes, invited conferences & lectures.

Manuel Pedro Ivens Collares-Pereira

Chairman of the Renewable Energies Chair at the University of Évora and President of the Board of IPES- the Portuguese Solar Energy Institute. He is also the Director of IIFA (Institute for Research and Advanced Education), the Doctoral School of the University of Évora. He has done extensive research in Solar Energy as a specialist in Optics and Thermodynamics. Author of a book on RE and Energy Efficiency and of a large number (>230) of scientific publications in areas like Non Imaging Optics. He has been coordinator of the University’s participation in several FP7 and H2020 projects and European Networks and he s the coordinator of INIESC- the National Research Infrastructure on Solar Energy Concentration.

Costas N. Papanicolas

Prof. Costas N. Papanicolas is the President of the Cyprus Institute and the head of the Energy Division at the Cyprus Institute. He is an MIT-trained physicist with over 35 years of experience as a researcher, an educator and a scientific administrator. He has held positions at CEA, France, and has served as Professor at the Univ. of Illinois (USA), and at the Univ. of Athens (Greece). He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and a member of the Academia Europea. He served on numerous boards and committees including: Chair of the Council on Educational Evaluation and Accreditation (CEEA) of the Republic of Cyprus, and the National Research and Innovation Council of Cyprus, chaired by the President of the Republic. Prof. Papanicolas has over 140 publications in peer-reviewed journals.

Werner Platzer

PProf. Dr. Werner Platzer, is a physicist, and received his PhD from the Albert-Ludwigs-University Freiburg in 1988. He has been working for more than 30 years for Fraunhofer ISE in Germany in R&D; of solar thermal energy, facade technology and energy efficiency in buildings. His current focus is on concentrating solar thermal technology for process heat and power. His current position is Executive Director of the Fraunhofer Center for Solar Energy Technology in Santiago de Chile. He is teaching as honorary Professor at the Faculty for Environment and Sustainability, University of Freiburg. He was appointed chairman of the IEC TC 117 on the standardization for solar thermal electricity (CSP) and has been actively involved in many European and international projects on CSP and Solar Process Heat. He has authored more than 200 articles and conference papers.

Eduardo Zarza

Dr. Eduardo Zarza is an Industrial Engineer and received his Ph D. from the University of Seville (Spain). He is a senior researcher of the Plataforma Solar de Almería (PSA, www.psa.es) with a 32-year experience on concentrating solar thermal systems. He has coordinated and participated in many national and international R+D projects related to solar water desalination and parabolic trough collectors. He is a member of the Scientific Committee of ESTELA (European Solar Thermal Electricity Association), the coordinator of the standardization group GT1 of the technical committee AEN/CTN206 and a member of international standardization committee IEC/TC117. He is the author/co-author of six books, fifteen chapters of books, thirty eight peer reviewed scientific papers and more than eighty contributions to international congresses.

Peter Heller

Dr. Peter Heller is a Mechanical Engineer and received his PhD from the RWTH Aachen. He is leading the department “Qualification” within the DLR Institute of Solar Research with a staff of about 30 scientists and PhD students, working on developing methods for measurement and assessment of the performance and durability of CSP components and systems.
Since 2008 Peter Heller is Operating Agent of the IEA SolarPACES Task III (Solar Technologies and Advanced Applications). He is also coordinator for the subprogram “Materials for CSP” of the EERA Joint Programme CSP.

Marcel Bial

Marcel Bial is since May 2013 Secretary General of ESTELA, the European Solar Thermal Electricity Association. The main focus of ESTELA is to support the deployment of CSP solutions in Europe and the Euro-Mediterranean zone as a part of the global efforts of the RES sector to decarbonize the European power sector and to ensure a sustainable energy supply. Prior to joining ESTELA, Marcel served as head of System Development at the European Network of Transmission System Operators (ENTSO-E), following his position as Secretary General of the Union for the Coordination of Transmission of Electricity (UCTE) in Brussels from 2002 to 2009. He has an in-depth experience with the Brussels-based energy associations and stakeholders’ engagement across EU and non-EU countries. He also worked as consultant to EU-funded projects outside Europe and looks back on a 25-year of experience in the power industry with Verbund Group in Vienna, Austria.

Natalia Caldés

Dr. Natalia Caldés is a senior researcher at the Energy Systems Analysis Unit of CIEMAT. Her research focuses on energy and climate change policy studies and sustainability assessment of energy technologies. She is now coordinating the H2020 MUSTEC project aimed at exploring and proposing concrete solutions to overcome the various factors that hinder the deployment of Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) projects in Southern Europe capable of supplying renewable electricity on demand to Central and Northern European Countries.

Adel El Gammal

Secretary General of The European Energy Research Alliance (EERA), Belgium.
Adel El Gammal is a recognized expert and a senior EU Affairs professional in the fields of low carbon technologies, energy transition, and climate change. Before joining EERA as Secretary General, Adel was active for the last 10 years in the EU climate energy debate, notably as Director of the Becquerel Institute, a consultancy providing advanced research and intelligence on the energy transition, and Secretary General of the EU PV Industry Association (EPIA, now SolarPower Europe), where he launched the SET-Plan Solar Europe Industry Initiative (SEII). Before focusing his activities on renewable energy and the energy transition, Adel held various international executive positions in blue chip companies active in the field of IT and Management Consulting. Adel is civil engineer from Ecole Polytechnique of Brussels, holds degrees in Business Administration from Solvay Business School (Belgium) and Insead (France) and later specialized in Environment Management (IGEAT, Belgium).

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