Energy: ENEA-Fondazione Bruno Kessler partnership on hydrogen, batteries and renewables

In addition to pooling their technical-scientific skills and research infrastructures, the collaboration will allow ENEA and FBK to work synergistically with other scientific institutions and Italian and international stakeholders and to strengthen partnerships linked to the European Green Deal, with particular emphasis on reference to the decarbonization process, the transition of the national energy system, technologies and end uses of hydrogen, batteries, smart sector integration, the development of new materials, components and systems for energy and IT technologies (Information Technologies).

“The collaboration with Fondazione Bruno Kessler represents an opportunity to support our country in the extraordinary contingency we are experiencing, profoundly conditioned by the current health emergency and by factors related to the world of energy, such as the decarbonization goals for 2030 and for 2050. All this will require targeted actions that will support businesses aimed at linking innovation to the development of value for the competitiveness of the national industry. And this is precisely what we want to offer thanks to this memorandum of understanding”, stressed Giorgio Graditi, director of the ENEA Department of Energy Technologies and Renewable Sources.

“We want to participate together with ENEA in a common global challenge. We feel strong tensions in the industrial and manufacturing sector, strained by the current situation and by elements of uncertainty, with the need to find new directions for development, where energy and environmental sustainability are a guarantee for future. We participate in this challenge with a common spirit, with a daily dedication to providing support to the industrial sector. We will share skills and infrastructures, methods and tools to accelerate and correctly direct all this effort”, echoed Luigi Crema, Director of the FBK Sustainable Energy Center .

Thanks to the memorandum of understanding, ENEA and FBK will act together to promote and coordinate project initiatives in the context of IPCEI (Important Projects of Common European Interest), in particular on batteries and hydrogen, through specific support actions for Italian companies.

“For the national industry, the urgency to build new skills, expand knowledge, develop technologies, products, services and projects and to receive full support on topics such as hydrogen, batteries and renewable energy sources introduced in industrial manufacturing and implemented in the local areas is apparent”, Graditi added. “And the ENEA-FBK partnership goes precisely in the direction of providing skills, tools and technological infrastructures in the context of real and concrete national needs and European opportunities, especially in those emerging energy sectors where Italy needs extensive support for the repositioning and strengthening of its manufacturing assets”, concluded Graditi.

“We offer industries a co-development model, through which innovators and technicians from industry and technology centers work shoulder to shoulder in the same environments, in the same laboratories, focused on a common goal. We strive to design technologies by improving performance and reducing costs, analyzing the benefits and validating the technologies. Making it to new markets first allows a positioning and growth factor on which we must focus at national level with all our efforts. The IPCEI initiative will allow ENEA and FBK to work with businesses and institutions in this direction”, Crema echoed.

ENEA and Fondazione Bruno Kessler are members and collaborate both with international organizations and initiatives, such as the International Energy Agency (IEA), Mission Innovation, Clean Hydrogen Alliance (CH2A) and Clean Hydrogen for Europe (CHE), IPCEI batteries and hydrogen, as well as with national organizations (H2IT and Confindustria) and represent a strategic partnership to promote local initiatives linked to energy communities and the use of renewable energy sources.

FBK/ENEA press release