HORIZON-STE project launches an animation video to promote Solar Thermal Electricity (STE) technologies’ wide potential in decarbonising the EU’s energy system.
Decarbonising energy systems is a major challenge in the fight against climate change. Depending on their unique circumstances and natural resources, each country has a different approach in reaching its decarbonisation targets. To overcome these differences, Europe needs a smart blend of renewable technologies in all sectors to meet different national agendas and achieve full decarbonisation
To overcome these differences, Europe needs a smart blend of renewable technologies in all sectors to meet different national agendas and achieve full decarbonisation. For example, sunny countries, like Spain, Portugal or Italy, can directly take advantage of their very good solar resources to decarbonise their power system and industry processes. Meanwhile, a less sunny country like Germany could also decarbonise its system and support its export industry through the deployment of green hydrogen production based on benefiting from importing dispatchable solar energy from Southern Europe and enabling adequate storage solutions.
STE, also known as Concentrated Solar Power (CSP), uses mirrors to concentrate the sun’s heat onto a receiver to generate dispatchable electricity on demand, day or night, while storing energy in its thermal storages. There are multiple ways to benefit from STE/CSP, wherever you are in Europe. Cross-border shared benefits include:
● exporting dispatchable power to less sunny countries; and
● joint industrial and research actions across Europe.
This means, countries with less favourable solar resources can:
● import dispatchable solar energy from Southern Europe, and
● directly use STE’s thermal energy storage capabilities for industrial objectives.
The stored heat can also be used directly for various industrial purposes, including green fuel generation.
HORIZON-STE is a Horizon2020 funded project aiming at supporting the Implementation of the Initiative for Global Leadership in Solar Thermal Electricity (STE) or Concentrated Solar Power (CSP), which was launched by the European Commission and adopted within the Strategic Energy Technology Plan (SET-Plan) of the European Commission.
Learn more about HORIZON-STE project: www.horizon-ste.eu
ESTELA – European Solar Thermal Electricity Association, as project coordinator, and four R&D institutions, namely CIEMAT from Spain, DLR from Germany, ENEA from Italy and METU from Turkey, have officially started the project on the 1st April 2019. Visit ESTELA website and learn more about STE/CSP: www.estelasolar.org