Partner No 6: European Energy Research Alliance – EERA AISBL

It is an international not-for-profit association incorporated and governed by the Belgian law of 27 June, 1921. The Association has been established in April 2014 and its main aim is to strengthen and to expand Europe’s capabilities in sustainable energy research by connecting and joining European energy research activities. In particular, the coordinated and streamlined efforts of the Association, in particular the coordinated joining of different public research programmes at regional, member state and European level, shall enable all stakeholders of energy research to optimise their research efforts and to overcome fragmentation in order to accomplish a strategic and targeted development of next generations of energy technologies. The efforts of the Association take place in the context of and contribute to the targets formulated in the Strategic Energy Technology (SET) Plan. www.eera-set.eu

So far the Association includes 173 members (mainly RTOs and Universities), covering 22 EU member states as well as Turkey, Norway and Switzerland. It is governed by the General Assembly composed of representatives of all the Members and by the Executive Committee (ExCo). EERA Aisbl has an operative body (the Secretariat) whose main tasks consist in supporting the ExCo and implementing its decisions, as well as support the development and running of Joint Programmes (JPs). The rules governing all aspects related to the functioning of EERA bodies are set out in the EERA Aisbl Statutes and Internal Rules of Procedure.

Members of EERA AISBL run 17 Joint Programmes (JPs) in all major Research areas of the SETPLAN. The EERA Joint Programmes are strategic collaborations between major research organisations forming virtual centres of excellence. Active in diverse areas such as bio energy, smart grids, advanced materials and energy storage, the Joint Programmes represent today an important part of Europe’s energy research backbone. The participating research organisation have a turnover of about 5 billion € on energy research only. Only the 6 largest research organisations have 20000 people working on energy research challenges. About 4000 researchers are active in the Joint Programmes and the Joint Programmes are the most important coordination bodies for low TRL cross-border research actions in Europe.

The EERA AISBL aims for developing and implementing European research roadmaps, informing the research community on available research infrastructures and special research facilities, improve the high level training of researchers and giving industry access to the best European technologies through a centralised IP management and other dissemination services.