CaLby2030 will be the enabling tool to achieve commercial deployment from 2030 of Calcium Looping using Circulating Fluidised Bed technology, CFB-CaL. Three TRL6 pilot plants across Europe (Sweden, Germany and Spain) will be developed for testing under industrially relevant operating conditions. To maximise impact, these pilots will investigate the decarbonisation of hard to abate CO2 emission sources: flue gases from modern and future steel-making processes that rely mainly on electricity, emissions from modern cement plants that cannot escape from the use of limestone, and from Waste-to-Energy and Bio-CHP power plants that fill the gap in scalable dispatchable power and allow for negative emissions. These pilots will collectively generate a database of over 4000 hours of operation. This data will be interpreted using advanced modelling tools to enable the scale-up of the key CO2 capture reactors to fully commercial scale. Process techno-economic simulation, cluster optimisation and Life Cycle Analysis will be performed to maximise renewable energy inputs and materials circularities. All this information will form the basis for undertaking FEED studies for the demonstration plants in at least four EU locations. Innovative CFB-CaL solutions will be developed and tested to reach >99% CO2 capture rates, reaching for some process schemes costs as low as 30 €/tCO2 avoided and energy intensities with Specific Primary Energy Consumption per CO2 Avoided below 0.8 MJ/kgCO2 when O2 from electrolysers is readily available as an industrial commodity. Societal scientists and environmental economists will assess the social acceptability and preferences for “zero” or “negative emissions” CaL demonstration projects with novel methodologies that will elucidate and help to overcome current societal barriers for the implementation of CCUS. The consortium includes the world-leading CFB process technology developer, key end user industries and leading academics including CaL pioneers.

Current energetic infrastructures are inefficient and hardly capable of integrating a large share of intermittent renewable energy sources. Carbon-neutral and high efficiency energy production adapted to local demands would be a breakthrough. SOLARX integrates 3 high concentration solar technologies and AI based smart resource management, to produce - either directly with high efficiencies or through storage stages for maximizing revenues - mainly electricity, heat for storage and/or SHIP and green H2 or Syngas in a carbon neutral way. Three Key Technological Elements will be developed: a smart solar resource management algorithm which aims to meet local instantaneous energy demands, a high efficiency CPV receiver and a carbon negative bi-energy H2 receiver. SOLARX’s main goal is to demonstrate the technical, economic and social relevance, at the laboratory scale, of the synergetic efficient production of heat, electricity and H2 from solar resource in a single facility, considering energy demands and market prices for a wide range of locations and application scenarios. SOLARX global assessment will demonstrate its role as a Game-changing RES within the framework of future implementation in a carbon-negative energy system. SOLARX will also provide power-to-X for larger integration of intermittent energy sources into the electric grid. The high efficiency concentration technologies allow to reduce the environmental impacts with respect to current technologies, as LCA study will demonstrate. Also, social acceptance and socioeconomic impacts will be assessed, on the base of, among others, previous high concentration experiences. The regulatory frameworks will be considered within the roadmap towards the technology commercialization and policy recommendations will be published. The share of SOLARX in the SHIP, electricity and renewable H2 global market by 2050 is expected to be 2-5%, 2-5% and 1-3%, respectively, while reducing by 1.5 GtCO2/year the emissions.

NewSOL proposal addresses the specific challenge towards high efficiency solar energy harvesting by advance materials solutions and architectures that are in line with those specified in SET-plan. Its main objective is to develop advance materials solutions based on innovative storage media and concepts for Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) up to validation in field of their performance by real time monitoring. This will be supported by an innovative thermal energy storage design based on the combination of new functional and advanced materials, like heat thermal fluid, sensible and latent energy storage media and insulating materials, into two innovative plant architectures: single tank thermocline storage and concrete type module. The main challenges of NewSOL are: Develop two new system Architectures: I) Thermocline Tank, (combining sensible and latent heat up to 550ºC), and II) Concrete module tank (sensible heat up to 550ºC). The scope to fulfil the challenges is to validate four new advance materials: 1) High thermal performance concrete (including carbon nanostructures), 2) Molten Salts (including nanoparticles), 3) PCMs, and 4) Filler Material re-usage. From the careful combination of the materials solutions within the two concept solutions six high relevant Impacts are expected: a) Reduced LCOE,10-12cEuro/kWh via higher material performance,b) New designs that enable a reduction of CAPEX and OPEX, c) Increase material understanding enabling long term performance,d)Deployment of high tech monitoring technologies included in the demo activities,e) Environmental re-usage of materials, and g) Through innovative materials, higher world market penetration of European materials supply sector. Moreover, investments foreseen at prototype level will be integrated into EMSP, part of the European Research Infrastructure Network, a research-enabling platform EU-Solaris, thus, NewSOL legacy will be a strength for the future of the European Renewable Energy Industry.