The Energy Materials Industrial Research Initiative (EMIRI) organised a “TECH TALK” event on March 7, 2019 in Brussels.

Phillipe Jacques, EMIRI Managing Director, launched the workshop by presenting the objectives of the association. He stressed the importance of targeting "clean energy and clean mobility where advanced materials are key enablers".

A new input on the cost of energy efficiency in buildings

Cristian Muresan, Head of Future Building lab at CRIGEN – ENGIE, brought a fresh perspective on energy renovation incentives. He argued that the payback might be insufficient for a business model. He mentioned that entrepreneurs are unlikely to make such investments with such little energy efficiency gain and such long payback periods (about 15-20 years). Since energy is rather inexpensive, the argument of energy cost/energy saving might not be an enough incentive to promote refurbishment and renovation. Cristian Muresan argues for finding new and more effective incentives.

ECTP – Materials & Sustainability Committee

Anne-Claire Bruant, ECTP Policy and Project Officer, presented the outlines of the organization and stressed its impact on gathering multiple actors from the whole value chain of the Built Environment.

A focus was made on the Materials & Sustainability Committee. Through the work on the Horizon Europe Position Paper, Christian ARTELT, Chairman of the Committee, highlighted the main challenges of materials in a sustainable built environment: waste hierarchy and circular economy as well as energy efficiency. He stressed the importance of "aligning construction material production with circular economy principles". An emphasis was made on the very limited efficiency increase in the construction sector and the value of maximizing the construction process through digital technologies to reduce life cycle costs.

Presentation of EeB PPP Projects

The workshop offered an overview of successful EeB PPP projects in nanotechnologies and advanced materials: WALL-ACE, GELCLAD, HOMESKIN.

The main discussed challenges to support the development of those technologies included:

• having nanotechnologies as intermediate solutions
• improving Technologies Readiness level (TRL 3 to 7)
• improving Manufacturing Process Readiness (nanomaterials having a high processing cost)
• increasing the qualified manpower
• understanding the construction product from its full life cycle perspective
• promoting funding.

Silica Aerogel based insulation technologies: a success story

Part of the AMANAC cluster, 3 projects using state of the art silica aerogel-based technologies were presented.

Dr Sergei KRUPSKI demonstrated 5 high-performance insulation solutions within the WALL-ACE project. The goal is to provide a complete mineral insulation solution for walls. Jorge CORKER, Senior Researcher at the Institute Pedro Nunes, introduced the GELCLAD project, for highly efficient cladding eco panels with improved nanoinsulations properties. Dr. Brice Fiorentino of ENERSENS and Dr. Etienne WURTZ of CEA presented their state-of-the-art Advanced Aerogel-Based Composite materials (HOMESKIN) that "show the lowest thermal conductivity of all insultation materials on the market". Their technology is claimed to be promisingly hitting the market in the near future.

For more details, please check the presentations available here.

Source: ECTP Secretariat