The EU Sustainable Energy Week is Europe’s most important policy conference on energy. The 2017 edition featured more than 60 conference sessions exploring the latest thinking on sustainable energy policy, led by representatives of the European Commission, industry organisations, local authorities and NGOs. It offered the opportunity to the more than 2,000 participants to discover innovative policies and projects for clean, secure, sustainable energy and build alliances for future cooperation. This year’s conference took place in Brussels from 20-22 June.
For the very first time, fusion energy was featured in the programme of the conference, highlighting the growing recognition of the important role it would be called upon to play in the sustainable energy mix of the future.
Fusion for Energy representatives organised a policy seminar on “Fusion: Clean, Safe, Unlimited Energy for the Future” and explained in detail what fusion is, how it works, the promises it holds and how far we have still to go to conquer this unique energy form. The progress of the ITER project, the next big step on the road to fusion, as well as the economic and industrial benefits arising from investing in the development of fusion were also detailed.
In the debate that followed the presentation, participants said to be impressed by the potential fusion offers for the generation of vast amounts of electricity in a safe and clean manner. It was noted that the arrival of fusion would not only signify unlimited energy for all, but would also mark the end of current geopolitical tensions linked to the location of the reserves of fossil fuels. Fusion can guarantee security of supply as the fuels required, sea water and lithium from the earth crust, are abundant and widely available everywhere in the world. Finally, despite the fact that the horizon for commercially available fusion energy is still a few decades away, it was clearly recognised that its development remains important as it is the only known energy source which has the potential for industrial scale baseload energy to cover the ever-growing future energy needs.
“Clean Energy for All Europeans” was the theme for the 2017 edition of the EU Sustainable Energy Week and the policy seminar offered by F4E underlined the key role that fusion will have in the respect.
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Japan joins the partnership as multilateral agreement progresses.
Commissioning of European systems advancing after successful mechanical tests.
Importance of ITER, private sector involvement and a stronger F4E amongst the key findings.
New grant for the Finnish research centre to develop divertor assembly technologies.
F4E, SIMIC-CSI and ITER Organization celebrate important technical milestone.