Carbon Dioxide Utilisation: A Catalyst for European Industrial Renaissance?

Essen will be the “place to be” at the end of September for those working on CO2 recycling and #useCO2 projects in Europe. The city will be the venue for the Fourth Conference on Carbon Dioxide as Feedstock for Fuels, Chemistry and Polymers on 29 and 30 September organised by the Nova Institute. And before the conference the SCOT (Smart CO2 Transformation) FP7 project will hold its mid-term conference on Carbon Dioxide Utilisation (CDU) on 28 September. All the events take place at the same location: Haus der Technik in Essen, Germany.

On 28 September the SCOT team will present its Vision for Carbon Dioxide Utilisation and a Strategic European Research Agenda for Europe. The floor will then be open for the views of high level speakers from politics and industry. Plenty of discussion is expected and you are welcome to take part!

SCOT wants to hear the voices of a wide range of participants. Break-out sessions in smaller groups will also provide opportunities for intense knowledge exchange and discussions on the various aspects of #useCO2 policy and technical issues.

Interactive sessions
This one-day conference will be THE place to hear about the latest developments on Carbon Dioxide Utilisation and help shape the future of CDU/ #useCO2 in Europe. Input from the conference will directly feed into SCOT advisory reports to the European Commission. These reports will cover both the future role of CDU in Europe and future support mechanisms for CDU.

The SCOT conference aims to actively engage academics, politicians and industry to discuss the Vision and business opportunities of CDU up to 2030. The break-out sessions will be in small groups of (20-25 people) and will involve a single presentation and a moderator to guide the discussion. The outcomes can help the SCOT team to further narrow down the project’s Vision, Research Objectives and Action Plan.

The sessions are on:

• The Potential of Carbon Dioxide Utilization for Mineralization and Waste
• Availability of low-cost low-carbon electricity for CDU
• Making chemical building blocks using CO2
• Working towards better LCA for CDU and System boundary definitions of CDU
• Power to X: Synthetic fuels from CO2? 
• Framing Carbon Dioxide Utilisation
• Bridging the Gap: (Policy) options to get from lab to market

The SCOT project team are certain that there are already many ideas for CDU that only require a good platform and funding to make them happen. At the end of the conference, SCOT is organising a matchmaking event to allow people to find projects and partners to respond successfully to the European research calls of 2016 on Carbon Dioxide Utilisation. Information will be available on next year’s Horizon 2020 calls including those under the SPIRE PPP initiative and the forthcoming Horizon Prize on CO2 utilisation. Come along to pitch your project ideas and expertise!

Participation in the SCOT conference (including the matchmaking event) costs €50 and you can register here. Students have the opportunity of getting a free ticket on a first-come-first-serve basis.
For more information, please contact the project secretariat. You can download the programme here.

CO2 as Feedstock
The SCOT conference takes place back to back with the Fourth Conference on Carbon Dioxide as Feedstock that is hosted by the Nova-Institute on 29 and 30 September at the Haus der Technik in Essen.

Over the last few years, the rise of this topic has developed rapidly from several research projects and industrial applications to become more and more dynamic, especially in the fields of solar fuels (power-to-fuel, power-to-gas) and also in CO2-based chemicals and polymers. At this conference leading players will showcase some enhanced and also new applications using carbon dioxide as feedstock. Representatives from political bodies and research institutes will be on hand at the event to present and discuss the latest national and regional policies, strategies and visions.

You can access the full programme for the event here and registration is here.