Battery 2030+ Initiative Starts to Power Up Europe’s Battery Revolution
The first EU Battery 2030+ project kicked off this week and will lay the basis for this large-scale research initiative on future battery technologies. A world moving from fossil fuels to renewable energy will rely more and more on energy storage and in particular on batteries. Better batteries can reduce the carbon footprint of the transport sector, stabilize the power grid, and much more.
The Battery 2030+ large-scale research initiative will gather leading scientists in Europe, as well as the industry, to achieve a leap forward in battery science and technology.
In ten years' time, Battery 2030+ is expected to have generated a new body of knowledge that will lead to ultrahigh performance batteries with integrated smart functionalities, and to have created novel research fields for future batteries - all in a sustainable framework.
In the Strategic Action Plan on Batteries published in May 2018, the European Commission has highlighted the need to support the European battery industry ecosystem with a long-term research initiative in future battery technologies.
The Objectives for Battery 2030+ state: "Europe's energy transition and digital transformation encompass advances in a wide array of industries, including electric mobility, renewable energy storage, internet of things, robotics, etc. The long-term success of these diverse activities hinges on the availability of ultrahigh-performance, reliable, safe, sustainable and affordable batteries."
The Battery 2030+ project, which currently includes 17 partners in nine European countries, has been selected for a Coordination and Support Action grant under the Horizon 2020 program. Over a period of one year (starting in March 2019), Battery 2030+ will lay the basis for a 10-year large-scale and long-term European research project.
The vision for Battery 2030+ is to invent the batteries of the future, providing European industry with cutting-edge technologies. Batteries are among the key technologies to achieve a deep decarbonization of the European energy system, notably in the transport sector (with electro-mobility) and in the electric power sector (with the storage of intermittent renewable energy sources), according to project coordinator Kristina Edström, Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at Uppsala University in Sweden.
In the near future, we will need new generations of ultrahigh-performance, reliable, safe, sustainable and affordable batteries. The competition to develop future battery technologies is already intense, but still very much open.
"We will address the challenges of making ultra-high performance batteries," says Kristina Edström. "This means establishing an acceleration platform for the discovery of new battery materials using machine learning and artificial intelligence, and especially focusing on interfaces in batteries where reactions take place that can be detrimental for battery lifetime. We will design smart functionalities down to the battery cell level, and pay particular attention to sustainability issues."
The Battery 2030+ consortium includes five universities (Uppsala University, Politecnico di Torino, Technical University of Denmark, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, University of Münster), eight research centres (French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, French National Centre for Scientific Research, Forschungszentrum Jülich, Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, Fundacion Cidetec, National Institute of Chemistry, Slovenia, SINTEF AS), three industry-led associations (EMIRI, EASE, RECHARGE) and one company (Absiskey). The Battery 2030+ consortium has also received the support of a number of European and national organisations, including ALISTORE ERI, EERA, EIT InnoEnergy, EIT RawMaterials, EARPA, EUROBAT, EGVI, CLEPA, EUCAR, KLIB, RS2E, Swedish Electromobility Centre, PolStorEn, ENEA, CIC energigune, IMEC and Tyndall National Institute.
