How beautiful is the European research, everybody knows. But what happens to the results of the projects at the end? As European citizens, do we get to perceive a real benefit of the innovative technologies, materials and processes developed?
The European Commission has been asking the question for years, and the approach to the answer has been efficient and structured. Evidence of this is the “Wind energy projects clustering” event in which Proplast participated last February 19th as coordinator of the EOLIAN project, on the development of new, more environmentally sustainable wind turbines.
This event, organized by CINEA, the European Climate, Infrastructure And Environment Executive Agency, was attended by representatives of the European projects funded by the EC of the last years. It was intended both to show them a summary and statistics of the sector and the tools, including legal ones, that the Commission makes available for innovation, and to ask the participants active inputs for the future development of the renewable energy sector, in particular wind power.
In fact, two thematic sessions involved participants divided into working groups and coordinated by qualified CINEA staff. The first focused on recommendations to policy makers and CINEA on what can be done to further push renewables and wind power. The second, on the other hand, focused on ccompetitiveness and wind energy R&I priorities so that it maintains and, indeed, increases its competitive.
The event was also a valuable opportunity to collaborate with other European projects. Proplast thus had the opportunity to meet the coordinators of Ecores wind (Gaiker), BLADE2CIRC (Aitiip) and Rewind (Aimplas), projects that were approved in the same call topic as Eolian, and which will promote joint communication initiatives, with the goal of disseminating and letting to citizens about the many important future results.
As we said before… how beautiful is the European research!