ACT is a fit-for-purpose, partner-driven, flexible funding scheme that serves our ambition: to make CCUS a commercially viable climate mitigation technology. Results relevant to the industry and policy makers have been and are still being provided from the ACT projects. Most importantly is that the ACT-projects have provided results of significant value:
• Paved the way for large scale CCUS deployment, e.g. provided results of relevance to development of large scale CCUS projects like Longship, Porthos, Acorn/Sapling etc.
• Delivered results aligned with the European SET Plan CCU-CCS Implementation Working Group and the Mission Innovation Priority Research Directions .
• Each ACT project is more than the sum of national efforts. Large impact is achieved when expert groups from several countries join forces in international ACT projects.
• Collaboration between partners (in Europe and across the Atlantic) who without ACT would not have found each other (not at all or not that easily).
ACT has succeeded in getting impactful projects funded in all ACT participating countries (though not all countries in all calls), and many of them have provided a considerable number of publications – not only for the scientific community but reached out to a broader community.
Five Knowledge Sharing Workshops have been held under ACT and the sixth is planned in June 2022. These events have been organized with the aim to ensure fruitful knowledge sharing and increase collaboration between all the ACT funded projects and other CCUS initiatives. ACT has worked towards improving procedures and re-acting to challenges; updating procedures according to improvements needed, be it the ACT-process or the scope of the initiative. The most important actors in ACT workshops were the funded projects: the collaboration between ACT and funded projects, the opportunity of ACT projects to learn more about other initiatives, but also the collaboration between one ACT funded project and other ACT funded projects. ACT tried to intensify sharing knowledge between projects and within the workshop dedicated time and organised sessions designed for asking questions and finding possible common directions.
The following funding agencies: RCN, PtJ, UEFISCDI, RVO, BEIS, Gassnova, CERTH, TUBITAK, AEI and GSRT, have all been active in the respective periodes making them eligible for Unit costs for additional activities (workshops, stakeholder engagement, additional calls etc.)
Several of the ACT-funded project have tasks related to socio-economic aspects of CCUS. During the ACT1 operation period, the researchers working on the socio-economic issues related to CCUS also formed a group to discuss their progress and how their results were communicated to the public and stakeholders in general.
The ACT group has paid attention to the gender balance and addressed this as a principal issue also in the calls for proposals. There are 18 female out of 33 project leaders, and when including the WP-leaders there even more females. In the ACT management group, there are 4 females out of 7, and among the full ACT-consortium member list we have 24 females out of a total of 42 representatives from the funding agencies. By paining seriously attention to this issue the last expert panel was established with close to 50:50 female:male.
The ACT consortium has funded several CCUS projects which are in line with the SET Plan Implementation plan targets, and with the 30 Mission Innovation research priorities to guide future CCUS RD&D (re: ACT Final report).
Ragnhild Rønneberg 13.01.2022 (rev. 17.01.2023 added info on Unit Costs)
