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STARCELL proposes the substitution of CRM’s in thin film PV by the development and demonstration of a cost effective solution based on kesterite CZTS (Cu2ZnSn(S,Se)4) materials. Kesterites are only formed by elements abundant in the earth crust with low toxicity offering a secure supply chain and minimizing recycling costs and risks, and are compatible with massive sustainable deployment of electricity production at TeraWatt levels. Optimisation of the kesterite bulk properties together with redesign and optimization of the device interfaces and the cell architecture will be developed for the achievement of a challenging increase in the device efficiency up to 18% at cell level and targeting 16% efficiency at mini-module level, in line with the efficiency targets established at the SET Plan for 2020. These efficiencies will allow initiating the transfer of kesterite based processes to pre-industrial stages. These innovations will give to STARCELL the opportunity to demonstrate CRM free thin film PV devices with manufacturing costs ≤ 0.30 €/Wp, making first detailed studies on the stability and durability of the kesterite devices under accelerated test analysis conditions and developing suitable recycling processes for efficient re-use of material waste. The project will join for the first time the 3 leading research teams that have achieved the highest efficiencies for kesterite in Europe (EMPA, IMRA and IREC) together with the group of the world record holder David Mitzi (Duke University) and NREL (a reference research centre in renewable energies worldwide) in USA, and AIST (the most renewed Japanese research centre in Energy and Environment) in Japan. These groups have during the last years specialised in different aspects of the solar cell optimisation and build the forefront of kesterite research. The synergies of their joined efforts will allow raising the efficiency of kesterite solar cells and mini-modules to values never attained for this technology.

The goal of this project is to help find the rules for a domain-wall engineering that optimizes photovoltaic efficiency of potential future-generation ferroelectric solar cells. The material to be studied is BiFeO3 as the most promising photovoltaic ferroelectric material known. Does the photovoltaic effect in BiFeO3 occur at the domain walls or in the bulk? What does it take a domain-wall to conduct electrons? The project aims at establishing the necessary conditions for electric fields and electrical conductivity at ferroelectric domain walls. Since experimental evidence is inconclusive, state-of-the-art ab initio methods will be applied. Electric fields have a long spatial range, so we will go beyond the standard supercell approach to obtain the spatial gradient of the band structure at the domain wall, needed to obtain charge-carrier distributions and electric fields. The Green's-function method for electronic quantum transport will be used for this purpose because it is suitable for extended, non-periodic systems. We will obtain the electrical conductivity as a function of the domain-wall type, structure, and purity. Conclusions for the role of the domain walls in BiFeO3 will be generalized as far as possible in order to apply them to other ferroelectric semiconductors as well. The applicant will receive training in state-of-the-art electronic-transport calculations by the host. In turn, the applicant will strengthen the host’s activities in the field of modelling optical properties of semiconductors. The project is positioned where fundamental condensed-matter physics meets applied solar-cell research. It is expected to advance the frontier of knowledge in basic research and to lay the ground for further research on ferroelectric photovoltaics. It is a contribution to the efforts of the European Union to develop innovative solutions for a sustainable energy supply that help achieve independence of fossil energy.

In Europe, hydropower is the largest renewable energy resource accounting for 16% of total production, most of which is concentrated in the Alpine region. However, this renewable energy comes at great environmental costs and development of large dams is now considered untenable in many Countries. While studies addressing the ecological implications of hydropower have mostly focused on large facilities, investigations on small hydropower (SHP) are scarcer. Yet, development of SHP is booming globally and in the Alps rising concerns about cumulative effects on riverine systems. This project proposes a multi-disciplinary investigation to better quantify hydrological alterations from SHP and its effects on Alpine stream ecosystems. Combining field-experiments, surveys and innovative modelling of existing flow data-series, the project will: i) quantify the spatio-temporal scales of hydrologic alterations associated with SHP using integrated analytical tools and modelling approaches applied to long-term, spatially distributed data; ii) experimentally mimic water abstractions from SHP using semi-natural flumes to assess the response of aquatic invertebrates and the link between community assembly and ecosystem function applying the Price Equation partition; iii) quantify flow-ecology relationships and the cumulative effects of multiple SHPs using novel functional regression models with streams hydrographs. The results will provide new insights into the short- and long-term effects of SHP on Alpine streams, with practical implication for the sustainable use of water resources. During the project, I will train intensively in methods and software to quantify and model alterations of river flow and habitat and in handling large datasets. I will exchange knowledge with modellers, engineers and freshwater ecologists and foster new collaborations, which will benefit my host organisation and myself. The fellowship will also allow me to return to my homeland after a decade.

Company ESDA has developed HeatSel®, the first viable macro-encapsulation solution functioning with phase change materials (PCM) for latent thermal energy storage in heating and cooling systems. Accounting for 50% of the EU's annual energy consumption, heating and cooling is the sector with the biggest energy-saving potential in Europe, and urgently needs to become more sustainable. In the low temperature range (5 to +100°C), most thermal energy amounts are required and then discarded worldwide. PCM are key materials to save these huge energy and – at the same time – CO2 amounts. They can run through a reproducible phase-change at a substance-specific temperature, during which the thermal energy is either stored in very large amounts or returned at a constant temperature. Since decades, an adequate method is being sought to transfer PCM into a user-friendly form. Both existing micro- and macro-encapsulation solutions for PCM storage have until now revealed industrially, technically and economically inappropriate. Sensible heat storage with large water storage tanks has very low energy density and storage capacity. ESDA is specialist in the technical extrusion of blow-moulded parts and has in the past 5 years acquired expert knowledge in PCM and thermal storage technology. HeatSel® is a PCM-filled capsule for use in aqueous systems as a heat transfer medium. Most unique selling points of the solution are: universal applicability with diverse (even older) heat exchangers; high energy efficiency through the re-use of waste energy (4 times more efficient than water heat storage) and boosting of renewable energy such as solar thermal technology. Primary target market is the high-volume heating and cooling market in residential buildings in Europe, secondary market is industrial process heat/cooling. ESDA foresees a large impact for HeatSel® in combination with solar thermal and heat pump systems, with a cumulated turnover of €33.7M and 56 job creations by 2023.

Wind power plays a crucial role in Europe’s strategy towards a zero-carbon, clean energy-powered economy. While efforts have primarily focused on the development of wind turbine technology, it starts to become evident that the planning associated with the end-of-service life of these installations has been vastly neglected. Wind turbine blades are a particularly challenging component due to their composition and sheer size, which causes uncertainty about how to get rid of them in an environmentally and economically sustainable manner. Frandsen Industri (FI) will tackle this problem through prototyping and testing a mobile separation platform, which shred and separate the blades directly on the wind farms, and have its functionalities and performance documented and validated. This mobile separation platform will meet the need of the wind farm owners and the wind farm manufacturers by solving the existing problems related to decommissioning wind turbine blades, as it will: • Reduce the transportation costs by 16x • Reduce the CO2-emissions by 16x • Enable the wind farm owners to recover the scrap value of €50/ton of their expired blades. As up to 250,000 tons of expired wind turbine blades are to be decommissioned per year in our targeted markets in the 2020-2030 period, the business opportunity amounts to €29M/year. The total CO2-emissions for transporting EOSLWTs blades per year using the current method is 1,540,000 kg. Using our mobile separation platform, the CO2-emissions for transporting EOSLWTs blades will be reduced by a factor of 16x, to 96,250 kg per year. We at FI want to continue our award-winning technological development of solutions within the sphere of decommissioning expired raw materials. The EcoBlade project is a vital part in this, as it allows us to strive for a leadership position in the future market of blade disposal, expecting a cumulated profit of over €10 million in year 5 post project.

SHAPE-ENERGY “Social Sciences and Humanities for Advancing Policy in European Energy” will develop Europe’s expertise in using and applying energy-SSH to accelerate the delivery of Europe’s Energy Union Strategy. Our consortium brings together 7 leading academic partners and 6 highly respected policy, industry and communications practitioners from across the Energy, Social Sciences and Humanities (energy-SSH) research field, to create an innovative and inclusive Platform. Our partners are involved in numerous European energy projects, have extensive, relevant networks in the energy domain, and represent exceptional coverage across SSH disciplines across Europe. These enable us to maximise the impact of our Platform delivery within an intensive 2-year project. SHAPE-ENERGY brings together those who ‘demand’ energy-SSH research and those who ‘supply’ that research to collaborate in ‘shaping’ Europe’s energy future. A key deliverable will be a “2020-2030 research and innovation agenda” to underpin post-Horizon 2020 energy-focused work programmes. It will highlight how energy-SSH can be better embedded into energy policymaking, innovation and research in the next decade. Our SHAPE-ENERGY Platform activities will involve >12,114 stakeholders and begin with scoping activities including: an academic workshop, call for evidence, interviews with business leaders and NGOs, online citizen debates and multi-level policy meetings. We will build on our scoping to then deliver: 18 multi-stakeholder workshops in cities across Europe, an Early Stage Researcher programme, Horizon 2020 sandpits, interdisciplinary think pieces, a research design challenge, and a pan-European conference. Our expert consortium will bring their considerable expertise to overcome difficulties in promoting interdisciplinary and cross-sector working, and reach out to new parts of Europe to create an inclusive, dynamic and open Platform. SHAPE-ENERGY will drive forward Europe’s low carbon energy future.

Dirt on solar panels causes losses of more than €40bn p.a. and over 100Mtonnes of CO2 emission. Cleaning is expensive (up to €100/m2 depending on accessibility) and wastes water. Current self-cleaning coatings suffer from short lifetime (2-3 years), poor transparency, and high cost (over €20/m2). They are usually not cost-effective, are not widely used, and losses are accepted as part of the operation of the plant. The objective of this action is to bring to market a new product, SolarSharc, which will provide, for the first time, a transparent, durable, cost-effective and permanent self-cleaning solution for solar panels. This patented coating technology uses multi-functionalised silica nano-particles bonded strongly to the coating polymer matrix to provide a highly transparent, low cost, durable and robust self-cleaning coating. Target markets are utility scale solar and the rapidly growing (18% CAGR €26bn by 2022) Building Integrated Photovoltaics (BIPV) markets. The objectives of this 24 month action are to commercialise the SolarSharc coating and new self-cleaning BIPV modules from the current TRL6 prototype to operational demonstration (TRL9) in BIPV, certification, commercialisation and supply chain measures to deliver rapid growth. The action will be delivered by a consortium of SMEs (Opus, Onyx, Millidyne) representing the supply chain from materials to application together with specialist coatings technologists from London South Bank University and solar testing expertise from CEA. We are requesting a grant of €2.78m to bring SolarSharc to market, securing €2m of post-action financing for sales growth. Commercialisation of SolarSharc will develop new revenues for the consortium of €71m with profits of €45m cumulative over 5 years of sales, creating 243 new jobs within the consortium and providing a return on EU investment in this action of 19:1. These sales will increase output from new solar installation by 9000GWh, saving 5Mtonne of CO2 emission.

The EU promotes the use of renewable energy for the reduction of CO2 emissions as part of the EU’s effort to protect the natural environment. It aims to reduce carbon emissions by 60% relative to the 1990 level by 2050 and increase the use of renewable energy to 20% by 2020. Buildings account for about 40% energy consumption in the EU and the use of renewable energy for heating and cooling of buildings will be important in achieving this goal. Transformation of the EU new-existing building stock towards low/zero energy buildings requires effective integration and full use of the potential yield of intermittent renewable energy sources. Thermochemical heat storage (THS) can play a pivotal role in synchronizing energy demand and supply, on both short and long term basis. The proposed solar powered thermochemical heat storage (Solar-Store) system will integrate solar collector, evaporative humidifier and heat pipe technology with a novel THS reactor design for seasonal storage of solar energy. The proposed system will deliver efficient, low-cost THS that can be fitted in the limited space in dwellings. The fellowship aims to benefit from Prof. Yijun Yuan’s recent work in energy storage systems, making use of sorption materials and solar thermal technology. Professor Yuan's considerable industrial and academic experience will make valuable contribution to the EU host organisation in terms of technology/knowledge transfer, PhD student/young researcher training and IP/commercialisation of new technologies. The partner organisations will also involve to this interaction (secondments) to enhance the effectiveness of the fellowship. Combining the skills and experience of UNOTT, Prof. Yuan and partner organisations and presenting them to the next generation of researchers and professionals in industry through the comprehensive programme of knowledge transfer activities proposed in this project will lead to a step change in the development of future products in this area.

Currently about 47% of the total energy consumption in Europe is needed for space heating and water heating, also considering the industrial heat/process heat. The biggest potential to reduce CO2 emissions significantly is within the heating sector. The ambitious objectives of the European and the worldwide climate and energy policy can only succeed, if the increasing heat and cold supply is considered. The technology of the near-surface geothermal energy offers good prospects for big energy savings and the reduction of greenhouse emissions and also ensures an ideal room climate in summer and winter within buildings. Due to the complex installation, connection and function, existing system solutions (especially in the near-surface geothermal energy) could not establish at the market yet. Another unsolved problem is the large space requirement of the heat source system and the unfavorable cost/benefit relation. Therefore Holzammer Kunststofftechnik GmbH and GeoCollect GmbH developed an innovative geothermal heat absorber system called “GeoCollector”. Project output is the ability to produce the current Prototype GeoCollectors (TRL 6/7) in a way meeting the identified market requirements: - use of renewable energy - low installation effort, low investment costs - high surface extraction rate of heat from the ground, low land usage - best value for money, low amortisation rate, high quality - No approval procedure necessary This is to successfully enter the key user market of companies of the housing sector, industrial companies, public institutions and private owners of houses and properties. Europe’s corresponding high-volume market is valued at €530-€770 Mio. for this field of operation, continuously growing rapid. The GeoCollector project is integral part of HA´s and GC´s strategy of developing and producing permanently new solutions for geothermal energy systems to establish clean and sustainable heating and cooling systems in Europe and worldwide.

In this project proposal reversible solid-state chemical reactions (eutectoids, peritectoids) are proposed for the storing of thermal energy at high temperature (300-800 °C). The development of a novel heat storage concept, based on solid-solid reactions, proposed in this project, could contribute to open new scenarios in the thermal energy storage field. To the best of our knowledge, the use of this class of reactions for TES applications has not been explored so far. The goal of this study is the identification of solid-state reactions fulfilling a large number of scientific and technological requirements (high storage capacity, good thermal conductivity, mechanical and chemical stability, complete reversibility of a charging/discharging cycles etc.). For this scope, an interdisciplinary research strategy will be followed involving materials chemistry, physics and engineering disciplines to achieve a complete overview of their behaviour starting from basic research challenges, focused on the material development and characterization (reactivity, stability, kinetic, reversibility, heat and mass transfer etc.), up to arrive to the investigation of their feasibility in real applications (e.g. concentrated solar power technologies (CSP) and waste heat recovery). During the project a two direction transfer of knowledge will be applied. On one side, an intense training will be offered to the applicant by the host laboratory with the objective to increase his scientific and managerial skills. Secondment in one established European technological center with recognized international expertise in concentrating solar plants (CSP) technologies is also planned. On the other side, the applicant will make available the knowledge and competences matured along his career both to give an impulse to the scientific work and fulfil the objectives set in the project and to explore other funding opportunities and collaborations.