CENER (National Renewable Energy Centre of Spain) in the context of ESA’s Integrated Applications Promotion (IAP) Programme will host the Ambassador Platform for European Adoption of Renewable Energy Sources (EARE). Ambassador Platforms help ESA’s IAP Programme to set up relationships with user communities to collect requirements for new services while federating the demand towards sustainability of them.
In the framework of climate change mitigation and security of supply strategies, Renewable Energy Sources (RES) are becoming a priority worldwide. In this context, Europe has adopted ambitious objectives for the next decade (the so called ’20 20 20 by 2020’ objectives) and a Strategic Energy Technology Plan (‘SET-Plan’). The challenges for RES to become major contributors to the energy mix include cost reduction, large scale implementation and grid integration. Space technologies can be a fundamental part of the infrastructural and challenging solutions required to make RES integration within electricity grids a reality and to facilitate the large scale development of RES.
The objective of this Ambassador Platform, managed by CENER, is to assist ESA’s IAP programme in spreading awareness for stakeholders, along the value chain of potential services in the domain of Renewable Energy Sources (RES). With this purpose CENER will organize jointly with ESA-IAP a series of workshops to bring together RES & space communities to discuss opportunities for new projects in the framework of IAP. The first workshop will be organized at CENER headquarters in Pamplona the next 30th of March with the title “Renewables and space: finding the synergies”.
About ESA
The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.
ESA is an international organisation with 18 Member States. By coordinating the financial and intellectual resources of its members, it can undertake programmes and activities far beyond the scope of any single European country.
IAP is the new ESA programme dedicated to find out new sustainable services assisting organisations to face their everyday challenges. IAP provides funding for studies and projects as well as technical expertise during the development of the service.
About CENER
The National Renewable Energy Centre of Spain (CENER) is a highly rated and internationally acclaimed technology centre specialising in applied research and the development and promotion of renewable energies. CENER has over 200 researchers and operates across the five continents. Its trustees are the Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Trade, the Ministry of Science and Innovation, Ciemat and the Government of Navarre.
CENER performs its activity in six work areas: wind, solar thermal and solar photovoltaic, biomass, bioclimatic architecture and renewable energy grid integration. Its headquarters are located in the Ciudad de la Innovación (Innovation Centre), in Sarriguren – Navarra, although it has offices in other locations in Spain. It has modern accredited laboratories and facilities on a European level, such as: the Wind Turbine Test Laboratory, the biofuel laboratory, a solar collector and photovoltaic module test laboratory, as well as a photovoltaic cell materials and processes laboratory. CENER is currently developing a second-generation Biofuel pilot plant.
