Mediaroom

Today the Commission published a Communication setting out a strategy to enable the EU to have a world-class technology and innovation sector fit for coping with the challenges up to 2020 and beyond. The document stresses the need for accelerating innovation in cutting edge low-carbon technologies and innovative solutions, for reducing costs rapidly and speeding up the introduction of new technologies to the market.

The EU’s contribution is to focus on large-scale efforts which go beyond what Member States can achieve alone or bilaterally, promoting innovation through regulation and financing. This should be done exploiting synergies between economic sectors (e.g. energy, ICT, transport, agriculture). The key efforts need to be reflected equally in private sector and Member State investments and the implementation needs to be increasingly based on partnerships allowing the necessary scale and scope.

Among the measures proposed: the development of an Integrated Roadmap addressing the energy system as a whole and measures along the entire innovation chain by the Strategic Energy Technology (SET) Plan stakeholders and the design of Action Plans with Member States.  Energy efficiency is increasing its visibility through creation of a coordination structure for energy efficiency under the Steering Group of the SET Plan, and the promotion of investments in research and innovation.  The Communication is available at: http://ec.europa.eu/energy/technology/strategy/strategy_en.htm

Source: The Commission