PE NEST – Network 4 Energy Sustainable Transition

The objectives of energy transition towards the carbon neutrality that our country aims to reach by 2050, following national and EU programs, require to follow a program of rapid reduction in the consumption of fossil fuels in the coming years with the full adoption of renewable energy sources, in civil, industrial, and transport sectors. These objectives can be achieved through a strong interaction among Universities, Research centers, and industrial system operating in the energy field through large groups as well as SMEs, start-ups and spin-offs which are all extraordinary sources of innovation. The challenges of the energy transition cannot to be faced only by the present technologies but need the development of new knowledge that stimulates the development of new technologies. The program of the project “NEST, Network for Energy Sustainable Technologies” framed in the PE program “Green Energies for the Future” aims to connect the main laboratories and university research groups and the main national research bodies, identifying interdisciplinary skills in order to develop technologies for the conversion and use of renewable sources that should be sustainable, both from an environmental and a social point of view, and resilient for the energy production and distribution, while being less subject to the risks deriving from the current supply system of fossil fuels, basically, oil, and natural gas. The ambition is to build a competent Italian leadership, strongly integrated with the territory and companies and capable of supporting the future development towards sustainable and decarbonized energy production and distribution.

Spoke 1 Solar: PV, CSP, CST

Spoke 1 will focus on topics useful to boost the PV and CSP/CTS sectors toward higher amount of renewable energy production at competitive costs, overtaking the actual limits and introducing innovation at low Technology Readiness Level. The project promotes a considerable pipeline of new and advanced versions of existing technologies, overcoming the obstacles from lab to fab production, enabling robust continued performance increase, developing new applications and facilitating further cost reduction, improving the eco-profiles of materials, technologies and systems within the PV, CSP and CST fields, by supporting local companies to develop and sell differentiated and high value products helpful to create competitive development and local jobs. The working plan is composed of cross-cutting issues addressing a sustainable horizontal integration between different topics and an eco-design approach for decarbonizing materials, technologies and systems.