New initiative commits to further strengthen European leadership in wind energy

The signing organisations are SINTEF, DTU, ForWind, TNO, Fraunhofer, ORE Catapult, CENER, CIEMAT and NTNU.

European research in wind energy gains momentum

There is a unanimous consensus that collaboration is the key to achieving the ambitious goals that lie ahead for the wind energy of the future. The EuCoE will be the platform where private and public funding will come together, defining the research needs from both academia and industry and formulating the projects that will deliver the necessary solutions.

“It is the first time that multiple research organisations, from six different European countries, agree to take this kind of initiative. We are looking forward to what is needed, not just in the next two or three years, but also in the next two or three decades,” said Ignacio Martí, Coordinator of the European Energy Research Alliance Joint Programme Wind (EERA JP Wind), at the occasion of the signature during the JP Wind Innovation Forum in Amsterdam.

Nine European research organisations

“Signing this memorandum of understanding is showing commitment from the research community,” underlined Stephan Barth, EERA JP Wind Steering Committee member and co-signatory on the side of ForWind. “The needs of the industry and the need to ramp up both onshore and offshore wind energy deployment in Europe is enormously large.”

The ambition of the European Centre of Excellence is to strengthen Europe’s long-term leadership in wind energy research through effective coordination, collaboration, and funding leverage. Activities are expected to include collaborative research projects within a co-funded research programme.

“We could move on the usual way, we have been quite successful in developing research in Europe,” recognised John Olav Tande, EERA JP Wind Subprogramme Manager and co-signatory on the side of SINTEF. “Europe is very much on lead on offshore wind, but now the bar has been raised, and we have even higher ambitions.”