"The European Strategic Energy Technology Plan (SET-Plan) has been the technology pillar of the EU's energy and climate policy since it was established in 2007. It aims at creating a new European policy framework for the development and deployment of low-carbon energy technologies, by delivering a strategic planning, effective implementation, optimised resources and a new approach to cooperation.
This includes a complex coordination between the European and national levels and between the public and the private sectors. Therefore, ""checking points"" are necessary to assess the activities developed so far, review the actions which have been carried out and put together key players from the Member States, the industry, research entities, academia and other stakeholders, in a collaborative effort.
To this aim, every year a large conference is organised in a Member State to network, review the achievements, discuss strategies and define new actions that help achieve the ambitious EU energy and climate targets.
In order to organise the 8th SET Plan conference, the Luxembourg Presidency of the European Council, as major authority of the selected venue, appointed My Energy G.I.E. Luxembourg’s national structure for promoting a sustainable energy transition, with expertise in events related to energy efficiency and the use of renewable energy sources.
During the conference, My Energy G.I.E. has ensured that relevant debates were facilitated between key actors (i.e. R&I to achieve key energy policy targets, Energy Union concept) while presenting the new SET-Plan to all the stakeholders. Ad-hoc management, dissemination and communication strategies were produced and deployed in order to create maximum awareness of such an event at the regional, national and EU levels.
More specifically, the main objectives of the eighth SET Plan conference (SET LU) which took place in Luxembourg, were:
• Facilitating the debate around the importance of Research & Innovation in achieving the EU's key energy policy targets and building the Energy Union;
• Presenting the main features of the new SET-Plan as adopted by the European Commission on 15 September 2015;
• Presenting the opportunities offered to the Member States and regions by:
o Coordinating their energy research and innovation programmes, as well as helping them making better use of the existing and new financial tools like the InnovFin facility on energy demonstration projects and the EU Structural and
Investment Funds;
o Increasing their collaboration through joint actions and clusters on projects with a European added value;
o Supporting faster market roll-out of low-carbon energy technologies.
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