Italy is a member country of Mission Innovation, a global multilateral cooperation initiative born in Paris in 2015 whose primary purpose is to accelerate the innovation processes of clean technologies, both in the public and private sectors, through the commitment of member countries [1] to double the public share of investments dedicated to research, development and innovation activities of technologies for decarbonization in order to make clean energy accessible to consumers and to create green jobs and business opportunities.
In particular, Italy has made a commitment to double in financial terms the volume of public resources dedicated to R&D of innovative energy technologies, raising public investment from 222 million euros (with reference to 2013) to 444 million euros in 2021.
On February 26, 2021, MiSE (now Ministry of Ecological Transition – MiTE) issued a Directorial Decree in order to implement the Mission Innovation initiative in which, among other things, it decided to make use of the National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (ENEA) for the development, implementation of research activities related to the commitments undertaken, also in coordination with other research bodies.
In this regard, a Program Agreement (AdP) was stipulated with ENEA, to which a total budget of 35.8 million euros is allocated for activities to be carried out, as of May 12, 2021, in collaboration with the following co-beneficiaries as indicated below:
- ENEA, for a total amount of 22 million euros
- Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR), for a total amount of 7 million Euros
- Italian Institute of Technology (IIT), for a total amount of 1.2 million euros
- Ricerca sul Sistema Energetico (RSE S.p.A), for a total amount of 5.6 million euros.
ENEA has the task of carrying out the research activities, in collaboration with the co-beneficiaries, detailed in the “Operational Plan of Activities” (POA) which was approved by the MiTE in November 2021 following the assessment and verification of congruity of the contents of the POA carried out by the expert assessors appointed by the “Cassa per i Servizi Energetici e Ambientali” (CSEA), the entity used by the Ministry for the management, administrative and technical-economic verification of the activities covered by the PPA.
The POA regards the following thematic areas
- Smart Grid: with the project “Multivector Integrated Smart Systems and Intelligent microgrids for accelerating the energy transition” (MISSION). Total budget of 9.7 million euros.
- Hydrogen: with the project “Hydrogen demo Valley: Multifunctional infrastructures for the experimentation and demonstration of hydrogen technologies”. Total budget of 17.5 million euros.
- Advanced energy materials: with the project “Italian Energy Materials Acceleration Platform – IEMAP”. Total budget of 8.5 million euros.
Responsible for the implementation of the AdP
- Ing. Giorgio Graditi, Director of the Department of Energy Technologies and Renewable Sources, ENEA
- Stefano Raimondi, Director of Division VI, New technologies and research in the energy and geo-resources sector, MiTE.
[1] Countries: Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Morocco, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Sweden, UAE, United Kingdom, European Union and USA.
