Challenges like climate change, economic, social and sustainable development as well as security are closely linked to the energy supply of European societies. In 2009, the European Union adopted a ‘climate and energy package’ including that at least 20% of EU gross final energy consumption have to come from renewable energy sources until 2020. The challenge of RICAS2020 is given by intermittent renewable energy sources which require increased energy storage to time shift this energy to meet daily demand. As a consequence, the demand for technologies for providing and storing energy is consequently increasing. The RICAS2020 Design Study for the European Underground Research Infrastructure related to Advanced Adiabatic Compressed Air Energy Storage (AA-CAES) will provide concepts to set-up a research infrastructure dedicated to underground storage of very high amounts of green energy. The big advantage of the new concepts will be that the underground energy storage can be performed independently from the encountered geological conditions and also at all places where high energy demand exists. AA-CAES collects the heat produced by compression and returns it to the air when the air is expanded to generate power and thus delivers higher efficiencies via a zero-carbon process. The Design Study RICAS2020 will provide concepts on the key criteria and focus on technical, legal, institutional and financial requirements of such a research facility and will be open for the whole European Research Area, especially for all research fields close to Energy Providers and Suppliers. RICAS2020 will be located as an extension to the research infrastructure Research@ZaB in Eisenerz, Austria, which is financed by the Austrian government and designed as a European Underground Research-, Training- and Test-facility focussing on underground mobility including tunnels and subways. Synergies between RICAS2020 and Research@ZaB will be given in all underground technologies.

The overall aim is to create the foundations for commercializing an automotive derivative fuel cell system in the 50 to 100 kW range, for combined heat and power (CHP) applications in commercial and industrial buildings. More specifically, the project has the following objectives: • develop system components allowing reduced costs, increased durability and efficiency • build and validate a first 50 kW PEM prototype CHP system • create the required value chain from automotive manufacturers to stationary energy end-users Mass-market production of fuel cells will be a strong factor in reducing first costs. In this respect, joining the forces of two non-competing sectors (automotive and stationary) will bring benefits to both, to increase production volume and ultimately reduce costs to make fuel cells competitive. As a consequence, the project partners have identified a PEM fuel cell based CHP concept to address the stationary power market, primarily for commercial and industrial buildings requiring an installed capacity from about 50 kWe to some hundreds of kWe. The main components of the system have been validated to at least laboratory scale (TRL>4). As a part of the present AutoRE proposal, the overall system will be demonstrated and further validated to increase the technology readiness level to TRL5. In addition, innovative solutions will be demonstrated to continuously improve performance and reduce costs and complexity. The project consortium reflects the full value chain of the fuel cell CHP system which will enhance significantly the route to market for the system/technology. The proposal relates to FCH-02.5-2014: Innovative fuel cell systems at intermediate power range for distributed combined heat and power generation, and it addresses the main specific challenges and scope laid down in the FCH JU AWP2014 to “develop, manufacturing and validation of a new generation of fuel cell systems with properties that significantly improve competitiveness".