Thirty-two countries are pooling their national research budgets to accelerate the shift away from fossil fuels. The Clean Energy Transition Partnership (CETP) coordinates 55 national and regional funding programmes, aligning their priorities so they invest in the same technologies rather than duplicating efforts across Europe. The problem is fragmentation: individual countries fund similar projects in isolation, slowing the development and rollout of clean energy systems. By creating a single transnational platform, the partnership aims to speed up innovation from local labs to European-wide markets. Between 2022 and 2027, it will run joint calls for proposals and organise activities to share knowledge and maximise impact. If successful, the CETP could cut the time it takes for cost-effective clean energy technologies—such as improved solar panels, grid storage, or heat pumps—to reach homes and businesses. It also builds innovation ecosystems that train researchers and support start-ups, strengthening the infrastructure that quietly keeps energy systems running. The partnership’s common vision, laid out in a Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda co-created with over 500 experts, targets Europe’s goal of becoming the first climate-neutral continent by 2050.
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The Clean Energy Transition Partnership (CETP) is a transnational initiative on joint RTDI programming to boost and accelerate the energy transition, building upon regional and national RTDI funding programmes. It aims to empower the energy transition and contribute to the EU’s goal of becoming the first climate-neutral continent by 2050, by pooling national and regional RDTI funding for a broad variety of technologies and system solutions required to make the transition. It will foster transnational innovation ecosystems from the very local and regional level, up to the transnational European level, thus overcoming a fragmented European landscape. The CETP is aiming to enable 70 national and regional RDTI programme owners and managers from 32 countries to align their priorities and implement annual joint calls from 2022 to 2027 (original first proposal as published by the EC on CORDIS). Actually 30 countries and 55 programme owners and managers formally participate in this Initial Grant Agreement. They also organise joint accompanying activities to enable a dynamic learning process, extract strategic knowledge (“Knowledge Community”) and maximise the impact (“Impact Network”) to accelerate the upscaling, replication and market diffusion of innovative solutions. This will foster the uptake of cost-effective clean energy technologies. The common vision of the CETP is already manifested in its Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA) that has been co-created in a broad engagement process during 2020, together with the involved countries, the EU SET-Plan Implementation Working Groups and ETIPs, all energy relevant ERA-Nets as well as the EERA joint programmes (over 500 editors, co-authors, commenters and discussants). The SRIA was endorsed together with the European Commission (DG RTD and ENER) in November 2020. This articulates the common goal of (1) building a transnational transformative Joint Programming Platform, (2) developing and demonstrating technology and solutions for the transition of energy systems, and finally (3) building innovation ecosystems that support capacity building at all levels.
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