SMARTSPEND
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Description and objectives
- PILLAR OF SYNERGIES: SMARTSPEND will drive the SET Plan. This will bring together all non-nuclear energy sectors to discuss their common interests around technology development and non-technological barriers to acceptance of their technologies. The partners will then talk in parallel with all the implementation working groups to ensure that synergies between each sector's ideas, plans and ambitions are leveraged. This will happen at the beginning, middle and end of the project.
- FINANCIAL STRATEGIES PILLAR: SMARTSPEND will also get the energy sectors to sit together and discuss their common funding needs, and compare how they each federate their European energy R&D interest and present it to the Commission.
The messages from the discussions in both pillars will be conveyed to senior government officials (ideally ministers) individually through a concerted campaign in the capitals of the SET Plan countries.
This is the SMARTSPEND 'roadshow', in which delegations of five heads of relevant companies are created, briefed and sent to the minister to tell their story and share their views. In addition, the project will ensure that everyone is more aware of the European Union's soft loan scheme for energy innovation, EDP Innovfin and the ETS Innovation Fund.
Both can complement national or European grants. SMARTSPEND will organize a conference, “Access to Venture Finance”, for energy technology developers and administrators of public and private funding or financing schemes.
Knowledge of the schemes' opportunities will be widely disseminated. The SMARTSPEND consortium has the ideal tools to reach deep into the stakeholder community behind each SET Plan energy technology.
Leading organizations behind the few technologies that are not represented in the consortium have sent letters of support for the proposal indicating that they will use other funds to join SMARTSPEND activities and comment on early versions of their reports.
SMARTSPEND's mission is to achieve “more and better designed public support for energy technology R&D” with a focus on national support. The project text speaks of “financial resources from industry and national public funds.”
Value proposition
Industry funding is like dark matter: it constitutes 80% of all expenditures, but it is not directly observable.
The part of industry funding that can be addressed by research policy is the part that is spent on projects co-funded with public money. The challenge of increasing private spending here is therefore the challenge of increasing the efficiency, relevance and amount of public funds.
The different schemes will be brought together to produce a coherent body of research (“Synergies Pillar”). This will enable funding agencies (in Member States / partner countries and operating at European level) to create programs designed for the overall collective interest of all clean energy technologies.
The technology will progress faster for the same input of resources as a result and SMARTSPEND will carry out the adaptation. Carefully chosen organizations - as partners or supporters - will be involved so that each plan will seek common ground and shared interests through the research work they have proposed.
The project also has a “Financial Strategies Pillar”. The consortium will reassess how the European Commission has chosen to federate stakeholder interest behind different energy technologies (e.g. as ETIPs, as contractual public-private partnerships, joint ventures, etc.) and find out in each case whether it is time to try a new way.
- The mapping of technical and non-technical synergies between the different SET Plan implementation schemes.
- The description of existing financing schemes and financing instruments to support the SET Plan.
- The organization of the roadshow to ensure adequate representation.
- Has a role in other activities to ensure that their constituency's opinion is represented.
Project partners
EUREC, CIRCE, EASE, ECTP, EGEC, EMIRI, ESTELA, OEE, FNR, WIP, ZABALA