Apply now for free Transnational Access to 43 CCS laboratory facilities which are part of the ECCSEL RI
The first call Volker for applications for Transnational Access is now open.
Apply now for free Transnational Access to 43 CCS laboratory facilities which are part of the ECCSEL RI
The first call for applications for Transnational Access is now open.
Transnational Access to the ECCSEL RI
ECCSEL (European Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage Laboratory Infrastructure) has established and provides access to a world-class research infrastructure (RI) in Europe for CO2 capture, transport and storage (CCS) technologies research.
The mission of ECCSEL is “Opening access for researchers to a top quality European RI, devoted to next generation CCS technologies in an efficient and structured way, to help enabling low to zero CO2 emissions from industry and power generation to combat global climate change”.
The ECCSEL consortium teams up selected Centres of Excellence on Carbon Capture, Transport and Storage research (CCS) from 9 countries across Europe. 14 partners are currently part of this project: Project Leader NTNU (Norway), PGI-NRI (Poland), SOTACARBO (Italy), TNO (The Netherlands), OGS (Italy), ETH Zurich (Switzerland), BGS (United Kingdom), SINTEF Energy Research (Norway), GIG (Poland), SINTEF Materials and Chemistry (Norway), CERTH (Greece), SINTEF Petroleum (Norway), CIUDEN (Spain) and BRGM (France).
To attract the best researchers from across the world, ECCSEL has created generous opportunities to carry out scientific research. This includes a commitment to grant effective access pursuant to a sub-set of pre-defined criteria. Effective access means among other things that a significant part of the access and/or available time will be kept open to researchers from other institutions than the facility owner institutions.
Access can be applied for in 2 ways:
- The researcher applies for access through the EU funded ECCSEL Infradev-3 Transnational access programme (travel, subsistence and research facility costs funded by EU)
- The researcher applies for access to a facility with own funding for research facility costs as well as for travel and subsistence.
The ECCSEL Horizon 2020 Infradev-3 project provides funding for a Transnational Access (TA) program that offers free access to 43 research facilities, which are part of the ECCSEL CCS RI in Europe.
Over a 2-year period will there be 3 open TA calls for research projects to apply for Transnational Access. The first call is open now and future TA calls are anticipated for June/July 2016 and November/December 2016.
Transnational Access offered by the participating research facilities within ECCSEL includes:
- Free access for eligible users / user groups to research facilities
- Support for travel and accommodation for 1 user per research project and for logistics
- Free access to information and data in the public domain held in the future at the ECCSEL Research Infrastructure
The procedure for granting access to use a laboratory facility is:
- A scientific advisory committee evaluates submitted proposals for user access projects according to pre-defined selection criteria.
- Evaluation of the funding plan for the proposals.
- Final evaluation based on availability of the specific research facility.
On the ECCSEL website, www.eccsel.org fact sheets for the various research facilities are accessible as well as online procedures for applying for access to them.
Background
The transition to a non-emitting energy mix for power generation will take decades. This transition will need to be sustainable, e.g. economically affordable. Fossil fuels, which are abundant, have an important role to play in this respect, if Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is progressively implemented. CCS is the only way to reduce emissions from energy intensive industries.
The challenges of climate change and the corresponding need for CCS research, innovation, technology development, testing and verification cannot be met by individually based research laboratories alone. For this reason ECCSEL has been established as a pan-European distributed Research Infrastructure, offering open access to the most advanced research laboratories devoted to CCS.
For the development of improved CCS-technologies and reduced costs, more research and development are needed. Thus, the need for upgraded and new CCS research facilities is widely recognised among stakeholders across Europe, as emphasised by the Zero Emissions Platform (ZEP) and the European Energy Research Alliance on CCS (EERA-CCS).
ECCSEL is a not-for-profit European research infrastructure consortium, the development of which has been funded by the European Commission, initially under the 7th Framework Programme and currently under Horizon 2020. The Norwegian Research Council is also strongly supporting ECCSEL. ECCSEL is coordinated by the NTNU Norwegian University of Science and Technology, and is since February 2016 in operation with available laboratory facilities, and access procedures including training, legal framework and cost information. ECCSEL is open for access to all researchers.
The intention with ECCSEL is that sharing laboratory research infrastructure will reduce the cost of installations and equipment by avoiding duplication and increasing the capacity utilization, and enable more efforts into scientific research work and education. Sharing the infrastructure also implies more interaction between research groups, and may create synergies like more product and process innovations, common scientific papers, new projects and more cooperation between academia and industry. Another important aspect of ECCSEL is that it represents an international platform for establishing new advanced facilities that otherwise would be to challenging for individual organisations.
The ECCSEL consortium currently operates some 50 research facilities in 9 countries representing a unique and excellent laboratory research infrastructure based within leading European CCS institutions and knowledge centres.
Hence, ECCSEL is based on a pronounced need for a dedicated and coordinated research environment, striving to close specific knowledge gaps, pushing the forefront of technological development beyond the state-of-the-art, and thereby accelerating the commercialisation and deployment of CCS.
ECCSEL aims to advice on and coordinate necessary laboratory infrastructure investments in the range of 100 – 120 million EUROs the coming 10 years, thereby reducing duplication and cost at a European scale. It is important for ECCSEL to enable an alignment of the various national strategies for laboratory research infrastructure development.
ECCSEL provides funders, operators and researchers with significant benefits by offering transnational access to world-class research facilities that, in many cases, are unlikely for a single institution and even for a single country to support in isolation. This implies creation of synergy and the avoidance of duplication as well as streamlining of funding for research facilities.
For more information please go to the ECCSEL website (www.eccsel.org) or contact Volker Röhling atvolker.rohling@ntnu.no.
NTNU Norwegian University of Science and Technology
NO-7491 Trondheim, Norway
