New Innovation Roadmap 2022: The Energy Cluster’s Challenge Catalogue Becomes More Finely Meshed
31. May 2022
The next round of Energy Cluster Denmark’s Innovation Roadmap has just been launched, and in the future the ambition is to get SMEs and universities more closely involved in defining the energy cluster’s biggest challenges.
What is the innovation need among your members? Where is it strategically most important to act, and what unresolved energy technology challenges should we work towards under the auspices of the energy cluster?
Every year, Energy Cluster Denmark asks these questions to six strategic partners to ensure that the cluster organization works with the technological challenges that are most pressing in relation to the companies’ work with the green transition.
The trade associations DI Energi, Green Power Denmark, Danish Offshore, Hydrogen Industry, Danish District Heating, Synergy and biogas are all key players in the energy sector, and as Energy Cluster Denmark’s “Innovation Boards” constitute their recommendations for the energy cluster’s work.
“With the lines of sight from our Innovation Boards, we are shaping the energy sector roadmap; the map we navigate by when launching innovation projects and activities in the cluster,” says Glenda Napier, CEO of Energy Cluster Denmark:
“There are plenty of challenges; not least when, like us, you embrace five energy technology areas from energy production to energy consumption and everything in between. With the annual Innovation Roadmap and its lines of sight, we ensure that the cluster’s work with innovation can be traced directly to the needs of the companies – and that we thus go for the “right” projects. The collaboration with our Innovation Boards ultimately contributes to giving us the most relevant, sought-after green innovation for the money,” she says.
SMEs and knowledge organisations
This year’s Innovation Roadmap formulates some of the technological challenges and, through the board of Energy Cluster Denmark, is handed over to the secretariat and translated into activities and innovation projects that create real value such as CO2 reduction, cost-out, energy savings and green transition.
An example of an energy technology mentioned in the Innovation Roadmap 2022 and that is under development is the district heating of the future.
“The district heating sector relies on innovation, collaboration and sector coupling to meet the common climate and energy goals and is of great value to Energy Cluster Denmark as a key player in bringing the right people and organisations together,” says Kim Behnke, Head of Development at Danish District Heating.
The next round of Energy Cluster Denmark’s Innovation Roadmap will begin even before the summer holidays and will explore even wider.
“We want to expand the process so that we get more SMEs and knowledge institutions in the loop,” says Glenda Napier:
“We need a research perspective to qualify the challenges, and SMEs are an important part of the value chain that will solve them. Therefore, their input is of great strategic importance,” she says.
Energy Cluster Denmark works with technological challenges within
- Energy production
- Energy storage
- Energy infrastructure
- Energy efficiency
- Sector coupling
