Project description
Coordinating and increasing investments in clean energy technologies
Industry, national governments and the European Commission invest in clean energy research and development to make a shift away from fossil fuels. The EU-funded SMARTSPEND project aims to find new ways to coordinate and increase those investments. The project will organise a major conference called ‘Access to Risk Finance’ to help innovators in clean energy obtain risk financing from public and private sources and increase private sector spending. The project will also report on the synergies in the research and development plans of different technologies and on the ways that different sectors should organise themselves to access EU funding efficiently. Ultimately, it plans to send a strong message to national governments, encouraging them to fund clean energy technologies.
Objective
SYNERGIES PILLAR: SMARTSPEND is going to put booster rockets under the SET Plan. It will bring all the non-nuclear energy sectors together for a focused discussion on their common interests around technology development and non-technology barriers to the uptake of their technologies. The partners will then talk in parallel to all Implementation Working Groups to ensure that synergies between the ideas, plans and ambitions of each sector are exploited. This will happen at the start, middle and end of the project.
FINANCIAL STRATEGIES PILLAR: SMARTSPEND will also get energy sectors to sit together and discuss their common needs for financing, and compare the way in which each federates its European energy R&I interest and presents it to the Commission.
The messages from discussions under both Pillars will be brought to the attention of high-level government officials (ideally ministers) individually through a concerted campaign in SET Plan country capitals. This is SMARTSPEND’s ‘Roadshow’, in which delegations of 5 relevant company bosses are created, briefed, and sent to the minister to tell their story and share their views.
In addition, the project will ensure all are better aware of the EU’s soft loan scheme for energy innovation, EDP Innovfin, and of ETS Innovation Fund. Both can complement national or European grants. SMARTSPEND will organise a conference, “Access to Risk Finance” for energy technology developers and the managers of public and private financing or funding schemes. Knowledge of the schemes’ opportunities will be spread widely.
The SMARTSPEND consortium has the ideal make-up to reach deep into the community of stakeholders behind each SET Plan energy technology. Leading organisations behind the few technologies not represented in the consortium have sent letters of support to the proposal indicating they will use other funding to join SMARTSPEND’s activities and comment on early versions of its reports.
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
CSA - Coordination and support actionCoordinator
81369 Muenchen
Germany
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.