In today's Insider Roundup Newsletter:
In this issue of The Insider, we dive into the critical dimensions of Europe’s energy transition, highlighting the role of institutions like INESC Coimbrain empowering consumers, enhancing grid stability, and advancing renewable integration. Our editorial explores the challenges and opportunities in making the energy transition more inclusive and resilient.
Beyond energy, we address broader R&I policies, with a focus on FP10 discussions, reactions from regional leaders on EU funding structures, and key updates on the European Competitiveness Fund. This issue also features INESC TEC’s recent accolades, the ambitious Guinness World Record programming lesson by IST and the important contribution of Inês Lynce, from INESC-ID, and an in-depth look at the evolving role of EU R&I investment in bridging the innovation gap.
Whether you’re in research, administration, or policy, The Insiderkeeps you informed and engaged with the latest on the EU’s journey towards a sustainable and competitive innovation ecosystem.
Editorial: Challenges of the energy transition and the role of the INESC System
The European Union (EU) has committed to an ambitious energy transition as part of its broader strategy to combat climate change, enhance energy security, and promote sustainable economic growth. Key objectives of the EU’s energy transition include:
- Achieving net-zero emissions by 2050, aiming to eliminate net greenhouse gas emissions across all sectors, including energy, transportation, and industry.
- Expanding renewable energy use, significantly increasing reliance on renewable sources like wind, solar, hydro and biomass, with a strong emphasis on green hydrogen production and other innovative technologies. Through initiatives like the Just Transition Mechanism, the EU supports regions and industries moving away from fossil fuels.
- Building an interconnected energy system, by envisioning a seamlessly connected network of electricity, heating, and transport systems that efficiently share resources, reducing emissions and maximizing efficiency.
- Investing in clean energy research and innovation to lead in low-carbon technologies, to make them more cost-competitive and scalable, aiming for leadership in green technology development.
- Reducing energy imports, strengthening energy security amid global tensions and risks, prioritizing local energy production, storage solutions, and smart grid technologies to create a more resilient energy infrastructure.
- Ensuring a fair transition through mechanisms aiming to support workers and communities affected by the shift from fossil fuels, addressing energy poverty and ensuring clean energy is accessible and affordable to all, with a focus on social inclusion.
Institutions within the INESC System have actively contributed to EU energy goals through extensive R&D and knowledge transfer across energy generation, network optimization, demand-side management, and market solutions. Despite these achievements, the potential to combine expertise across fields for more impactful, synergistic outcomes remains largely untapped.
At INESC Coimbra, the focus has been on empowering consumers in the energy transition. Through longstanding research on end-use energy efficiency, INESC Coimbra’s Sustainable Energy Systems and Policy research stream has focused on promoting efficient energy use, renewable integration and system resilience, all advancing a cleaner and more sustainable energy future. Research spans energy efficiency, demand response, electricity markets, quality of service, and electric mobility.
The EU’s energy transition prioritizes consumer empowerment, enabling households to play an active role in a sustainable energy system. Sound research in power systems, optimization, artificial intelligence, and behavioral sciences is essential to this vision. In the EU, households account for over 25% of final energy consumption, primarily for heating, hot water, and cooking. Improved insulation, efficient heating, and smart home energy management systems are key strategies for increasing efficiency. Decision-support tools also help consumers choose energy-saving products by ensuring clear labelling and efficiency standards.
The Clean Energy for All Europeans package grants consumers the right to generate, store, and sell renewable energy, creating “prosumers.” Energy communities, formed by prosumers, benefit from shared investments in renewables, such as community-owned solar and wind installations. Energy communities face several optimization and decision support challenges as they work to manage shared renewable energy resources, reduce costs, and increase energy efficiency. These challenges include:
- Energy resource allocation and scheduling – associated with determining the optimal energy production and consumption matching, and load balancing and demand response.
- Storage management – optimal storage utilization and contribution to peak shaving.
- Cost and revenue optimization – dynamic pricing and cost reduction, and revenue from energy trading.
- Coordination and communication among members – collective decision making, data privacy and security.
- Renewable generation and consumption forecasting.
- Energy infrastructure investment decisions – upgrades and scaling, optimal sizing of renewables and storage,
- Regulatory compliance and incentive maximization.
- Environmental and social impact assessment – carbon emission reduction tracking, social equity and fair distribution.
These challenges call for advanced data analytics, optimization models, consideration of consumer behavior and digital platforms that enable real-time monitoring, forecasting, and decision-making. Research carried out at INESC Coimbra for energy management through smart technologies includes maximizing the advantages of smart meters that enable real-time monitoring and dynamic adjustment of energy use, benefiting from dynamic pricing, and integrating renewables to create efficient, adaptive smart grids. The development of load models and the design of demand response programs considering the consumers’ preferences enables consumers to adjust consumption and make an integrated optimisation of their energy resources (exchanges with the grid, local generation, storage and load management) offering them benefits in the energy bill reduction and supporting grid stability.
The institutions of the INESC system have the competences to help making the energy transition more inclusive, equitable, and sustainable, for which the involvement of consumers helps foster a bottom-up shift toward greener and more efficient energy use.
Carlos Henggeler Antunes, Marta Lopes, Luís Neves, and Ana Soares
The Insider Roundup
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Special mentions
INESC TEC wins EARTO European innovation award
INESC TEC is the winner of the European Innovation Award, presented by EARTO – European Association of Research and Technology Organisations; each year, EARTO acknowledges innovative contributions with high social impact through two categories: “Impact Delivered” and “Impact Expected”. INESC TEC is the first Portuguese institution to win this award in the latter category, reinforcing its role as the largest engineering research and development institution in Portugal, and one of the main national centres dedicated to the transfer of technology for digital innovation.
Read the full report here.
How to achieve a Guinness World Record: the backstage of the largest programming lesson
A line spiralling around the building of the Tecnico Innovation Center (TIC), at eight in the morning of an otherwise lazy Saturday, was a good hint that we were about to experience something we had never seen before. Something worthy of the Guinness World Records. The promise was to set the record for the largest computer programming lesson in a single venue. A goal Instituto Superior Técnico, together with Magma Studio, was determined to achieve.
Read the full article by INESC ID.
Out of the box
The Puzzle of Pricing the Future
Liliana Doganovadescribes her book, Discounting the Future: The Ascendency of a Political Technology, as a study in the “historical sociology” of discounting. Discounting—determining what value to place on income in the future relative to how we value it today—has its roots in finance and economics and is much discussed in today’s climate change policymaking.
Read the full article in ISSUES in Science and Technology.
Issues in Science and Technology
The Linear Fallacy
The elegance of linear math seduces us to apply it in situations where it may not be applicable.
Read the full article, by Moshe Vardi, in Communications of the ACM, Association for Computing Machinery
“Out of the box” is a section about… those different, geeky ideas we all love.
Thematic Areas
Advanced Computing
Human-Centered Cybersecurity Revisited: From Enemies to Partners (Commuinications of the ACM, Association for Computing Machinery)
Artificial Intelligence and Data Science
Viewpoint: we need to invest in ‘pro-worker’ artificial intelligence research, not automation ( Science|Business)
The Paradigm Shifts in Artificial Intelligence (Communications of the ACM, Association for Computing Machinery)
AI era calls for an overhaul of higher education – HE leader ( University World News)
Global university leaders flag dangers of AI access gap ( University World News)
INESC TEC researcher’s work in epilepsy earns him award for Innovation in Artificial Intelligence at the largest technology fair in the world ( INESC TEC)
Bioengineering and Health Technologies
INESC TEC researcher published a book that explores technology applied to health ( INESC TEC)
INESC TEC helps training algorithms to improve the diagnosis of certain diseases like cancer ( INESC TEC)
Electronic systems, Microelectronics and Optoelectronics
Europe’s pilot line to enable future compute systems ( Nature Magazinereviews – electrical enginnering)
How Embedded Sensors Technology Is Powering a Greener Future ( INESC Microssistemas e Nanotecnologias)
Power and Energy Systems
The path to the energy transition unites two continents – passing through INESC TEC ( INESC TEC)
Robotics
Once again, INESC TEC broke the Portuguese record with robots descending to a depth of 830m in the largest robotic exercise in the world ( INESC TEC)
INESC TEC demonstrated a mobile manipulator that seeks to “reduce errors” and be more efficient ( INESC TEC)
Drones, automation and sensing: here are INESC TEC’s solutions to the challenges of the wine sector ( INESC TEC)
Systems Engineering and Management
The impact of the EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard in Science and Policy (Joint Research Council, European Commission)
Transversal Areas
R&I Policy
The future of European research: 5 key actions for a competitive Europe ( EU-LIFE)
FP10 must be distinguished by excellence, impact, and purpose ( The Guild of European Research-Intensive Universities)
EARTO Reaction to the new EC Expert Group Report on Horizon Europe’s Interim Evaluation ( EARTO – European Association of Research and Technology Organisations)
Link between SDG research quality and policy questioned ( University World News)
(Denmark) Ministers announce ambitious funding for green innovation ( University World News)
Interdisciplinary research grabs policy-makers’ attention ( University World News)
We cannot adopt a blanket approach to research security ( University World News)
Preliminary Position Paper of the Ministry of Education, Research, Development and Youth of the Slovak Republic on FP10 ( Slovak Liaison Office for Research and Development in Brussels)
Research commissioner designate outlines plans for Framework Programme 10 ( Science|Business)
The Netherlands vision paper on the future EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation FP10 ( Neth-ER (Netherlands house for Education and Research))
State Visit of the President of the Portuguese Republic to the Netherlands ( aicep Portugal Global)
Viewpoint: a brutal fight lies ahead in securing our future in research ( Science|Business)
EAIC Response to the Align, Act, Accelerate Report on FP10 ( EAIC – European Association of Innovation Consultants)
Dual use research in FP10 could cause problems for associated countries, says EU’s chief negotiator ( Science|Business)
EP science and tech panel elects its bureau ( European Parliament)
STOA gears up for the 10th Parliamentary term ( STOA, European Parliament)
Confirmation hearings of Commissioners-designate will take place from 4 to 12 November (ITRE, European Parliament)
R&I Funding
Align, act, accelerate – Research, technology and innovation to boost European competitiveness (report by the expert group led by Manuel Heitor Manuel Heitor)
Independent experts call for increased investment to strengthen Europe’s research and innovation leadership ( European Commission)
Time for a major shakeup of how the EU funds research, expert group says ( Science|Business)
Commission plans €1.47B for industry R&D to bolster tech autonomy ( Science|Business)
Commission joins forces with venture capital to support deep tech innovation in Europe ( European Commission)
Portugal promises fast implementation of the recovery plan ( Euractiv)
Dialogue-based funding is making headway in university budgets ( Science|Business)
European Research Council winners and losers in Horizon Europe ( Science|Business)
EU invests €4.8 billion of emissions trading revenues in innovative net-zero projects ( European Commission)
EU invests over €380 million in 133 new LIFE projects to support the green transition all around Europe ( European Commission)
Snapshot of the draft of the upcoming Budapest Declaration, at the occasion of the informal meeting of the Heads of State or Government in Budapest on November 8 – see image below. (Kurt Deketelaere, LinkedIn)
Industry and SMEs
Industry 5.0 Community of Practice discuss future directions to achieve its goals ( European Commission)
The year’s best technological solution for public transportation is Portuguese – Ubirider, INESC TEC start-up, won an international award ( INESC TEC)
Disruptions in supply chains are a major issue for SMEs – INESC TEC has a model to help them addressing this problem ( INESC TEC)
Micro & small businesses make up 99% of enterprises in the EU ( Eurostat)
Knowledge Valorisation and Entrepreneurship
The role of European universities in patenting and innovation ( European Patent Office)
72 new companies join the EIC Scaling Club which aims to turn 20% of its members into unicorns ( European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency (EISMEA))
Open Science
The European Commission announces the EOSC EU Node’s transition to full production ( European Commission)
Regions and Ecosystems
The Ecosystem: Milan moves to bridge the gap between basic research and start-up formation ( Science|Business)
FP10 needs ambitious and stable budget, say regional leaders (ResearchProfessional News)
Regions ring alarm bell over proposed EU competitiveness fund ( Science|Business)
Skills and Careers in R&I
(Sweden) Concern over drop in residence permits given to researchers ( University World News)
Research and Innovation Careers Observatory ( OECD – OCDE and European Commission)
International Cooperation
Africa and Europe unite to tackle food-systems challenges ( University World News)
China sets out roadmap to become ‘leading education power’ ( University World News)
Millions of euros in Erasmus+ funds meant for Africa not used ( University World News)
The current China-phobia is harming US national interests ( University World News)
Critical Infrastructures and Resilience
Can critical infrastructures compromise a country’s security and resilience? The ninth edition of the INESC TEC Autumn Forum will explore this theme ( INESC TEC)
Key events and other news
How to write a policy brief – 30 October ( European Geosciences Union (EGU))
Workshop on Attractive Careers in Research: the expectations & roles of different stakeholder groups – 4 & 5 November ( Science Europe)
AI, Data, Robotics Forum – European Sovereignty in AI, Data and Robotics – 4 & 5 November ( Adra – AI-Data-Robotics-Association)
Brain Health : From Biomarkers to Innovation – 14 November ( CEA)
Igniting the potential of Swiss and European Deep Tech Start-ups & Scale-ups – 14 November ( SwissCore)
What it takes: successful models for academia-industry knowledge valorisation – 19 November ( European Commission)
The Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment: Why sign it and what does it entail?– November 22 (Inpiring ERA)
Boost your career: new EU tools and support for attractive research careers– 4 December (Inspiring ERA)
Note: Various articles of our newsletter are part of the “Funding Newswire” section in Science Business. In this section you can find the latest news in research funding, from calls to policy updates and its implications.
INESC is part of the Science Business Network, so you get free access to this section by signing up with your institutional email (it must be an email address from any of the 5 INESC institutes).
We invite you to engage, to reflect, and to join us in shaping the discourse that will define the future of research and innovation in Europe.
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