Achieving a climate neutral society by 2050 constitutes one of Europe’s highest political priorities. This objective is anchored in the set of policy initiatives under the EU Green Deal aiming at supporting the Clean Energy Transition and reaffirmed by the European Recovery Plan.

The Clean Energy Transition entails a sustainable and socially fair transformative process, encompassing technological, social, economic, and political dimensions, towards a cleaner and integrated energy system. Research and innovation (R&I) plays a central role in accelerating these essential transformations by designing, demonstrating, de-risking and deploying innovative solutions. Moreover, the upcoming Horizon Europe framework programme will generate a wave of multidisciplinary mission-driven R&I actions to support the transition, such as the Clean Energy Transition Partnership (CETP) that will be central to this effort.

For its part, the Strategic Energy Technology Plan (SET Plan), which currently sets the roadmap by which the EU aims to meet its Energy Union targets by 2030, is also crucial in setting the direction in the wider context of the Green Recovery and the new long-term EU climate policies pertaining to the Clean Energy Transition. In this regard, the redefinition of the SET Plan priorities should seize the opportunity for better integrating the multidisciplinary aspects of the transition, notably Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH), as a critical element in achieving a climate neutral society.

The European Energy Research Alliance (EERA) has aligned its mission to Europe 2050 climate targets and has recently expanded its endeavours to support such target, by advancing research and supporting policy-making in all key dimensions of the transition beyond technology excellence. Central to this effort is the White Paper on the CETP, which proposes a robust framework for approaching the transition from a holistic, systemic, cross-sectoral and multi-disciplinary perspective.

In this framework, the EERA SET Plan Conference Side Event 2020 ambitions to:

Analyse how to leverage existing projects and initiatives for greater impact, and
Reflect on new initiatives that could further increase the impact of EU collaboration and substantially accelerate the speed of the transition.

Session Access

Access to the online event will be provided after registration and shortly before the event.

Questions

Contact Ivan Matejak (i.matejak@eera-set.eu) or Maria Luisa Fernandez (ml.fernandez@eera-set.eu), should you require any additional information.

SET Plan Conference 2020 - EERA Side Event