The SETcon 2021 proposal aims to successfully organize and hold the 15th edition of the European Strategic Energy Technology Plan Conference and by its means to contribute to the goals of the SET Plan as it is outline on the Horizon Europe, Work Programme 2021-2022, “Climate, Energy and Mobility”). The European Strategic Energy Technology Plan (SET-Plan) was established to accelerate the transformation of the European energy system and to bring new low-carbon energy technologies to market. It identifies actions for research and innovation throughout the whole innovation chain. SET-Plan conferences offers an unique opportunity for decision-makers, researchers and stakeholders to get together and evaluate the progress made towards achieving the SET-Plan’s goals and for informing the general public about the activities and get their support. Under the tittle Research & Innovation to deliver a just and sustainable energy transition present edition will also serve to present Slovenia as an engaged contributor to the SET-Plan priorities. The Conference will take place in Ljubljana on 25-26 November 2021 and will be co-organised by the Republic of Slovenia’s Ministry of Infrastructure as entity responsible of all activities on energy policies during the time of Slovenian Presidency of the Council of the European Union, in coordination with the European Commission DGs Research and Innovation (R&I), Energy (ENER) and the Joint Research Centre (JRC).

TIMEPAC will contribute to improving existing energy certification processes, moving from a single, static certification to more holistic and dynamic approaches that consider: a) the data generated in the overall energy performance certification process, from generation to storage, to analysis and exploitation, and throughout all the building lifecycle, from design, to construction and operation b) buildings as part of a built environment, connected to energy distribution and transport networks and c) buildings as dynamic entities, continuously changing over time. TIMEPAC will demonstrate the feasibility of combining EPC databases with other data sources to make certification more effective and reliable. The new methods and tools to enhance current certification practices will be developed in five Transversal Deployment Scenarios, and validated in four demonstration scenarios across six European countries: Austria, Croatia, Cyprus, Italy, Slovenia and Spain. The outcomes will be used as training materials to further educate professionals involved in certification processes throughout Europe. An online platform will provide access to training materials and courses delivered in a variety of contexts (onsite and online, blended). A TIMEPAC Academy will further develop and exploit the innovative EPC enhancement methods and tools and the training materials developed in the project.

Europe is challenged to increase the share of renewable energy for heating and cooling, industrial processes, power generation and energy storage. Geothermal energy is a vastly under-utilized indigenous, clean, low footprint and continuously available energy resource, and thus uniquely positioned to substantially contribute to a safe and secure energy supply of Europe’s Energy Union. Hitherto only utilized in choice markets and in only a few geographical regions, GEOTHERMICA’s objective is to combine the financial resources and know-how of 16 geothermal energy research and innovation programme owners and managers from 13 countries, to launch joint actions that demonstrate and validate novel concepts of geothermal energy utilization within the energy system and that identify paths to commerciality. Joint actions comprise joint calls and coordination activities, which will strengthen Europe’s geothermal energy sector by building a tightly interconnected and well-coordinated network of European funding agents. For a first joint call, some € 30 million will be made available for a small number of major demonstration projects. Joint calls will have a strong industry participation with a targeted 50% contribution towards work programs and budgets of successful proposals. In addition to joint programming and joint calls, a number of additional activities will be undertaken to develop shared and deep knowledge, to promote operational excellence, to exchange good practices in the realm of support policies, and to define strategic recommendations related to long-lasting and durable joint pursuits of research and innovation. Ultimately, a strong public sector will complement the research and innovation community as well as Europe’s geothermal industry sector to build an overall strong European geothermal energy sector ready to contribute to the European Energy Union, the implementation of the SET Plan as specified by the SET Plan Roadmap.

"From local trials to a European knowledge community". The challenges of modernising the electricity grids in Europe lies in enabling an increased flexibility of the European power system, efficiently providing increased transfer capacity and enabling an active participation of users and new market actors (by providing the information, services, market architectures and privacy guarantees). To address these challenges, innovation is needed in system integration, interoperable technologies, services, tools, co-ordination schemes, business processes, market architectures and regulatory regimes to plan, build, monitor, control and safely operate end-to-end networks in an open, competitive, decarbonised, sustainable and climate-change resilient market, under normal and emergency conditions. The major challenge is now to overcome the fragmentation of knowledge and accelerate knowledge exchange between the already existing demonstration projects and R&D initiatives with the goal to enable them to develop European wide interoperable solutions, according to a common reference architecture. With this, critical masses shall be reached in the development of a European market for smart grids technology providers and smart grids service providers. This initiative does not intend to find the final specifications for smart grids, but to organise the learning down to regional Smart Grids stakeholders, beyond the demonstration phase towards implementation. The overall goal of the “ERA-Net Smart Grids Plus” is to support deep knowledge sharing between regional and European Smart Grids initiatives by financing 15-20 transnational projects on applied research, piloting and demonstration in the field of Smart Grids, taking a next step in Smart Grids development building on the knowledge base, R&D initiatives as well as research and demonstration facilities already in place at regional, national and European level. It will coordinate during 2015-19 national and regional RDD budgets of more than 30 M€.