Priority Areas for Collaboration and Support

CAESIE will focus on addressing three major societal challenges, which reflect key policy priorities for the EU and Australia. These areas build on existing EU-Australia cooperation activities and focus on areas of research strength and complementary capabilities. The selected areas are:

• Clean energy
• Healthy ageing through enabling technology
• Sustainable cities

These priority areas are broad descriptors and your project may fall within more than one of these or appear to be outside of the stated area.  Therefore if you have any questions about your project  classification within the priorities then please email us here. We are only too happy to help.

Clean Energy

Clean Energy is a key priority for the Australian Government. The Australian Government is investing more than $5 billion (AUD) through the Clean Energy Initiative to support the development of clean energy and energy efficiency technologies. The Australian Government is establishing a $10 billion (AUD) Clean Energy Finance Corporation, which will leverage private sector financing for large scale renewable energy and clean technology projects, and has established a $3.2 billion (AUD) Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) for research and development, demonstration and commercialisation of renewable energy and related technologies.

Australia’s research strengths and capabilities within the Clean Energy societal challenge include:

• Enhancing energy efficiency;
• Replacing ageing energy infrastructure and shifting the energy market towards low carbon emission power sources, such as solar, wind, tidal, biofuels and natural gas technologies (LNG); and
• Securing reliable, sustainable, and competitively priced energy supplies for the future.

Secure, clean and efficient energy has been identified as a key challenge facing Europe and will be one of the focus areas of Horizon 2020, the future Framework Programme for Research and Innovation. The European Commission is addressing this challenge within the policy context of the Innovation Union Flagship Initiative, the Strategic Energy Technology Plan (SET-Plan), the EU Energy Strategy 2011-2020 and the recently adopted EU Energy Efficiency Action Plan. The technology priorities identified in the SET-Plan are likely to define the key research areas of the Horizon 2020 energy challenge. On a sectoral level seven European Industrial Initiatives on solar energy, bioenergy, wind energy, CCS, smartgrids, smart cities and sustainable nuclear fission will bring together the industry active in each of these areas. So far four of these initiatives (solar, wind, electricity grids and CCS) have been launched.

Healthy Ageing through enabling technologies

Australian engagement in this challenge will be driven by the government’s National Enabling Technologies Strategy, released in February 2010. A suite of emerging innovative technologies (such as nanotechnologies, information and communication technologies, biotechnology and cognitive science) offers the prospect of enhanced security, safety, diagnosis, treatment and physical assistance to improve the quality of life for elderly people, to help them remain at home, and to provide financial savings in aged care and medical treatment.

Active and healthy ageing has been identified as a major societal challenge common to all European countries. In March 2011 the European Council endorsed the launch of a Pilot European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing as one of the key initiatives of the Innovation Union Flagship under the Europe 2020 Strategy. The overarching target of this pilot partnership will be to increase the average active and healthy lives of European citizens by two years by 2020. On 7 November 2011 the Steering Group of the Partnership agreed on five specific joint actions which will be implemented in 2012. The work of the Partnership builds on numerous existing national and EU level activities on healthy and active ageing.

Sustainable Cities

Creating a sustainable living environment is an important issue for the Australian government and the long term challenges faced are commonly shared with the rest of the world.

Australia is one of the most urbanised countries in the world and a major role for the Australian government is to address key challenges and opportunities to improve the productivity, liveability and sustainability of Australia's cities. The Australian Government has adopted a national approach and introduced a range of initiatives designed to strengthen the framework for a sustainable Australia.

Already several Australian universities (Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT), University of Melbourne and Edith Cowan University) have developed extensive expertise in this area and have a range of collaborative activities underway between Europe and Australia.

In addition, the Cooperative Research Centre for Polymers is developing biomedical polymers required for high technology developments and advanced polymeric materials to assist in more sustainable use of land, water and energy resources. 

Australia is also interested in developing high-technology solutions and services for land management, marine environment, atmospheric, and emergency response as part of the sustainability of our cities. Solutions such as the European Commission's Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) are of great value to Australia.

In June 2011 the European Commission launched the Smart Cities and Communities Initiative, the EU's new programme for the energy efficient cities of tomorrow. The Initiative will support cities and regions to undertake a 40% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 through sustainable use and production of energy. Measures on buildings, local energy networks and transport are the main components of the Initiative. Under FP7, teams of cities and industry partners have been able to apply for EU-funding in the fields of integrative management of urban energy flows that also include transport, water and waste solutions. Further calls under the Initiative address buildings, heating and cooling systems, networks and energy supply technologies.