Objectives

The objective of TPWind is to identify areas for increased innovation, new and existing research and development tasks. These will then be prioritised on the basis of “must haves” versus “nice to haves,” the primary objective being overall (social, environmental and technological) cost reductions.

This will help to achieve EU objectives in terms of renewable electricity production. The platform will develop coherent recommendations, detailing specific tasks, approaches, participants and the necessary infrastructure, in the context of private R&D, as well as EU and Member State Programmes, such as FP7. TPWind will also assess the overall funding available to carry out this work, from public and private sources.

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Working Groups

The main objective of TPWind is cost reductions. Cost reductions shall be performed through Technological improvement and large-scale deployment of the technology. The aim of TPWind is therefore to provide two main outputs:

  • a Strategic Research Agenda, addressing Technological improvement,
  • a Market Deployment Strategy, addressing large-scale deployment of the Technology.

Through its Strategic Research Agenda, TPWind will encourage the industry to intensify its research efforts in line with, or exceeding, the overall Lisbon objectives, while increasing the focus on the long term view, and it will encourage the uptake of long term research findings in the development of new prototypes.

Through the Market Deployment Strategy, Member States, EU institutions and the industry will be able to tailor policy development against the changing needs of the technology as it matures.

The structure of TPWind therefore comprises:

  • Technology Research and Development Working Groups responsible for building the Strategic Research Agenda,
  • Policy / Market Development Working Groups responsible for building the Market Development Strategy.

For each group, a preliminary work programme is available online at: http://www.windplatform.eu. This work programme is focused on areas of main interest for reducing the costs of Wind Energy.

Finance Working Group

One of the key concerns of the platform is the assessment and procurement of sufficient funds to pay for the innovation and R&D tasks it identifies.

The Finance Working Group explores and quantifies the complete range of opportunities for research funding, which can then be matched to the tasks as prioritised by the Steering Committee. It endeavours to build up the role of private industry in collaborative R&D, and to identify new sources of investment in the public sector through, for example, the Structural Funds.

It also investigates opportunities to be had through the new initiative of the European Investment Bank (EIB) and the European Commission—the Risk-Sharing Finance Facility— to leverage EIB loan investments in large European R&D projects and infrastructures.

Mirror Group

This Group comprises the relevant ministries and energy agencies of Member States that wish to participate. This group is fundamental to the success of TPWind. It provides an opportunity to tailor national R&D activities to complement EU activities, and vice versa, and to develop synergies.

It is also an opportunity for Member States to collaborate in pushing forward some of the short term operational issues facing wind energy, such as those described in the Copenhagen Declaration.

Steering Committee

The Steering Committee is the decision-making body and executive arm of the Technology Platform. It directs all activities and is accountable for:

  • Defining roles and responsibilities within the platform,
  • Outlining operations compliance with the Platform mission and related activities,
  • Approval and launch of activities, including objectives, timing and scope,
  • Follow-up activities and approval of deliverables,
  • Final assessment of key deliverables (Strategic Research Agenda and Market Development Strategy) with support from the Secretariat, based on Working group reports.

Secretariat

The Secretariat of the Wind Energy Technology Platform optimises the activities of the Platform. It manages the calls for selecting the members of the high-level Member States Mirror Group, Working Groups and Financing Group. It also provides logistical, functional and organisational support to the Technology Platform groups, and, where appropriate, will provide intellectual input to their discussions, particularly with regard to the fine-tuning of its Action Plans: the Market Development Strategy and the Strategic Research Agenda.

The Secretariat comprises EWEA, Garrad Hassan and Risoe. The Secretariat has been assigned for an initial period of 36 months. Under contract with the European Commission, the secretariat supports the technology platform’s key objectives and helps to build an identity for the platform. It maintains a strictly neutral position as regards policy setting and orientation of final documents and deliverables of the Platform.

The structure of TPWind is summarized by the figure below. The structure is focused on cost reductions. It answers to three main aspects:

what shall we propose?

Working Groups

how do we pay?

Finance Working Group

how do we implement these proposals?

Mirror Group

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