COMPILE IN BRIDGE GA: SESSION “UNLOCKING THE POTENTIAL OF EU ISLANDS”
What: COMPILE participated in session during the BRIDGE General Assembly
Where: Online
When: 3rd March 2021
The parallel session explored what were the key challenges to unlock the potential of EU islands in becoming the front-runners in the energy transition process. Participants debated on how to develop integrated and renewable energy-based systems while ensuring a positive impact on the wider energy infrastructure, on the local economy and local communities.
The session consisted of two main parts. The first part was about advancing the clean energy transition on the EU islands – a renewable future for island communities with the contributions from Clean Energy for EU Islands Secretariat, projects NESOI, ROBINSON and Samsø EnC. The second part presented (energy and geographical) islands through the eyes of several H2020 projects, more specifically integration of local renewables and carbon-free islands energy systems. Joint presentation on energy islands was structured in three sections – opportunities, challenges and recommendations. Besides COMPILE, we learned about experiences from projects MERLON, MUSE GRIDS and RENAISSANCE. The next two presentations covered geographical islands (projects INSULAE, SMILE, ISLANDER) and the hydrogen-oriented island projects.
Both parts were followed by the open discussion which emphasised the importance of support by Clean Energy for EU Islands Initiative for the EU network and the main barriers to the EU funds accessibility for islands and the challenges related to that. Nevertheless, all participants agreed that EU islands, whether geographical or energy, have a huge potential in the energy transition.
The BRIDGE General Assembly annually gathers the Horizon 2020 projects on Smart Grid, Energy Storage, Islands and Digitalisation. The 2021 edition, held between March 2 and 4, was an occasion to present the latest activities by the BRIDGE Working Groups and Task Forces during the last period, as well as to discover the new BRIDGE projects and hear about the results and lessons learned from ended projects. Several parallel sessions were organized to strengthen the collaboration between projects and discuss future BRIDGE topics in 2021.
