Page 52 - European Energy Innovation magazine - autumn 2022 edition

Autumn 2022 European Energy Innovation
52 ENERGY TRANSITION

Breaking down silos to unlock the energy transition

By Dr Vicky Stratigaki of Ghent University in Belgium; Professor João Murta Pina, from NOVA University of Lisbon, Portugal and Mr Carlo Battisti, Living Future Europe, Italy

ith 2050 targets ahead, Europe aims to POWER
become the world’s first climate neutral COST Action ‘A pan-European Network for Marine
continent and a climate-resilient society. Renewable Energy’ (WECANet) aims to promote the large-
WFostering connectivity amongst researchers scale deployment of Wave Energy Converters (WECs).
and innovators is key to tackle the many challenges
related to energy efficiency and decarbonization. COST Wind and solar power have made major advances and are
Actions are the perfect platforms where interdisciplinary widely implemented across Europe. However, the potential
collaborations can occur and enable new solutions of other energy resources such as wave energy is still to
in a wide diversity of fields such as renewable energy, be tapped.
materials improvement, and regenerative economy.
“For the large-scale deployment of marine renewable
energy technologies, an interdisciplinary approach is
necessary,” says the Action Chair, Dr Vicky Stratigaki of
Ghent University in Belgium.

The network pools together diverse sources of expertise
cross cutting the environmental, social, and economic
dimensions of marine energy projects. “A major issue is to
increase confidence of potential investors by reducing (non-)
technological risks and related uncertainties. Significant
bottlenecks need to be addressed such as installation
practices and procedures. The development of arrays is
a key factor to achieve an optimal installation size that is
attractive to the energy sector.” Dr Stratigaki adds. “Research
needs to re-focus on techno-economic perspectives,
which considers the full life cycle costs of the technology.”

During 2021 WECANet has been moving ahead with around
30 Short Term Scientific Missions (STSM) and a Round-
Robin (*) testing campaign was completed. “Different
laboratories from across the WECANet network tested the
same WEC device to assess experimental reproducibility,”
explains Dr Stratigaki. This will develop a reliable database
for validating advanced numerical models.

SUPERCONDUCTIVITY
“Increasing distributed renewable generation, changing
transportation paradigms, and improving energy efficiency
are some of the foundations for the Energy Transition. A
multitude of challenges requires a variety of solutions.
High Temperature Superconductivity (HTS) based
technologies can address all these major challenges, and
thus, have a role in the solutions.” says Professor João
Murta Pina, from NOVA University of Lisbon, who chairs
the COST Action High-Temperature SuperConductivity for
AcceLerating the Energy Transition.

High-temperature superconducting (HTS) materials
are able to enter the superconducting state above the

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