📆 June 4-5, 2024 | 📍 EnergyVille in Genk, Belgium.
The SUNERGY initiative and the EU-funded SUNER-C project co-organized the event “Harnessing Renewables for a Sustainable Future – Exploring CCU, Power-to-X and Solar-to-X Innovations”. This event was co-organized together with the European Commission, the European Innovation Council, IMEC, EuroTech Universities Alliance, and the EU projects CATART, CONDOR and FlowPhotoChem.
Following the European Innovation Council’s €24 million challenge announced in December 2023 to advance solar-to-X technologies, this two-day event brought together key stakeholders to discuss innovations for creating fossil-free products like renewable hydrogen, sustainable aviation fuels, and green fertilizers. The EIC challenge aims to develop devices at the prototype level, to establish metrics for a fair benchmarking and to explore underlying phenomena by means of computational materials science.
Image 1 – Han Huynh and Frédéric Chandezon presenting “SUNERGY and its Technological Roadmap: Solar-to-X in a nutshell”
The event joined speakers and panelists related with the solar-to-X topic, from different perspectives, arousing interesting discussions among participants. SUNER-C partners played a prominent role throughout the conference, delivering various speeches. Kristof Verbeek, from ArcelorMittal Belgium, presented a pitch introducing ‘The Steelanol demonstration plant’ as an example of a technological solution in development.
Nicola Armaroli, a member of SUNER-C’s international advisory board, delivered a keynote speech on the current status and future challenges of converting sunlight to molecules. Armaroli underscored the significance of solar energy and direct solar fuels for the EU’s future clean energy needs while noting the continued requirement for significant research and innovation. In the same session, Muriel Matheron from CEA presented a speech on the “EASIFUEL prototype,” a finalist for the EIC Horizon Prize on Artificial Photosynthesis.
On the second day, Han Huynh from ENGIE and Frédéric Chandezon from CEA discussed the advances towards the SUNERGY’s technological roadmap, one of the main outcomes from the SUNER-C project, during the “Devices of Tomorrow” session chaired by Carina Faber from EIC.
This talk was followed by the “Which technology will meet its expectations” session which addressed fair benchmarking and standards, with Joachim John from IMEC as panel chair and Moritz Schreiber from TotalEnergies as one of the thematic speakers who discussed the main technical challenges of industrial CO2 electroreduction to ethylene.
Image 2 – Maximilian Fleischer presenting a keynote speech on “The need for green molecules for a sustainable economy”
Finally, in the context of the “Outlook: What else is needed? Insights from industry and governmental initiatives” session, Maximilian Fleischer from Siemens and Eric De Coninck from ArcelorMittal highlighted the necessity of green molecules for a sustainable economy and emphasized the importance of policy support for industrial CCU (Carbon Capture and Utilization). De Coninck stressed the need for a revision of EU policy to ensure the success of industrial CCU projects.
The event also included remarks that highlighted the European Innovation Council’s goals for solar-to-X technologies. Sessions covered societal challenges and deep tech solutions, with speakers from the German Federal Ministry of Research and Education and the European Commission.
Breakout sessions focused on techno-sustainability assessments and advancing technologies from research to manufacturing stages. There was also a panel on fundraising strategies for scaling up solar-to-X innovations, moderated by Francesco Matteucci from the European Innovation Council.