Alliance for Energy Transition

In a moment where Europe is dealing with the impact of a war that has, besides the humanitarian disaster, a significant impact on the availability and affordability of fossil energy resources, such as natural gas and oil is impacting the whole economy, and the existing strategy towards decarbonization has been re-enforced and accelerated, as a mean to reduce global warming but also to increase our energy independence. The ATE Consortium intends to place Portugal in the leadership of the decarbonization of society, taking advantage of our unique availability of renewable based energy sources and of our technological and scientific know-how in the Power and Energy domain. Massive integration of renewable energy sources is the steppingstone to this process, together with mobility, by using energy vectors such as electricity and hydrogen to decarbonise society. This process leads however to tremendous challenges, mainly due to the variability of these resources and also to a profound change that needs to take place in the energy system, that must change its nature from a vertical, passive and predictable approach to a distributed, dynamic and end-user centric paradigm. To support this new paradigm, a significant amount of technological development needs to occur, exploring digitalization as a mean to incorporate pervasive intelligence in all products, solutions and processes related to the management of the energy system of the future. In ATE, a well-balanced consortium, formed by more than 90 partners, designed a structured approach in the most relevant vectors of the energy system, creating solutions in the whole value chain: on the generation, transmission, distribution and final use of energy. The proposed strategy includes quick wins, departing from higher TRL resulting from previous R&D projects and business knowledge, but also significant scientific advances that will increase the value of products. This agenda also puts a significant effort in the most important asset to companies – know-how and qualification of human resources – that will be crucial to leverage the required investment and create long-lasting competitiveness to the Portuguese industrial cluster on the energy sector.