Episode Transcript
[00:00:10] Speaker A: Welcome to the EU Energy Projects Podcast, a podcast series from Enlida and France focusing on the clean energy transition for the European Union and the EU Commission funded energy projects that will help us achieve it. My name is Aretid Daradimu. I am the editor of the EU Energy Projects Podcast and your host.
[00:00:34] Speaker B: In this episode of the EU Energy Projects Podcast, I speak with Katrin Sturckle, project Manager at Steinbase, about the Steinbase Cluster and its work supporting energy intensive industries. From hydrogen in glass to carbon capture. We explore project milestones, challenges and how EU funded initiatives are shaping decarbonization pathways and future policy.
Hello Katrin, and thank you very much for joining us today.
Would you like to start a little bit with an overview of the Steinbase Cluster?
[00:01:12] Speaker C: Yes, of course. Thanks for having me today. So I'm working as a project manager at Steinbeis Rupert Centrum, so maybe I can first introduce Steinbeiss Rupert Centrum and then later explain. Explain how the cluster was formed. So Steinbeit Ropertzentrum is part of the Steinbach foundation, which has a strong focus on knowledge and technology transfer between research and industry. It's very famous in Germany, but we at Steinbeis Rupert Centrum, we are a company focused in EU funded projects, as our name says.
We've been working in European innovation consulting for 35 years now and every year we support around 90 projects and work with a lot of partners. What we do is support the organizations along the whole innovation journey. So we help partners identifying the right opportunities for funding, we help them building consortia, proposal support, up to full proposal writing.
And in projects, we also take an active role in the management and communication dissemination, exploitation of the results.
And yeah, we're working with a broad range of stakeholders, industry, research organizations, clusters, organization, also cities in some of the projects. So very broad focus.
[00:02:19] Speaker B: Yeah, it sounds like the holistic, let's say, solution there. But why was the cluster formed and how do the projects complement each other? Because they should have, let's say, a common ground at some point.
[00:02:32] Speaker C: Yes, they do. So I think last year we heard about ENLIT and this sounded very interesting to us because we're always trying to see where we can increase the outreach of a project. And then we found out that we were not the only ones with our project. So I think more than five projects were interested in joining. This is why we decided to join forces internally, because this provides even more benefit to have a bigger booth, to have bigger outreach and the projects are very different. But we are all pursuing one goal, which is the Decarbonization and also the energy transition. If you would like to, I can also briefly outline what the five projects are about there you can see what they are about. Or we do that later.
[00:03:09] Speaker B: No, no, absolutely we can do it now. I just wanted to say that as the head of the EU project Zone, I'm very happy to hear that you guys met during our event. But yes, please tell me, tell me about the projects.
[00:03:21] Speaker C: Yeah, so CORYU is the first project this focuses on carbon capture and storage, which is CCS for short. So it addresses the question what to do with CO2 that cannot be avoided today, especially in the hard to build industries and how to transport and also store it safely across regions and borders in whole Europe. And we are watching the whole CCS value chain in this project. So it's mostly about infrastructure and system integration. Then we have Captus. It's not a CCS, it's a CCU project. So the CO2 will not be stored, it will be used.
It explores how the carbon can be turned into renewable energy carriers like alternative fuels or chemicals.
And the project uses renewable energy for this conversion. This makes it relevant for sectors where the direct electrification is very difficult in the future. In aviation and shipping and also in the chemical industry.
Then we have most H2 and H2 plus. They both focus on how hydrogen can be used in real industrial processes. So most H2 works on replacing fossil based fuels in high temperature industrial processes with hydrogen using materials like metal organic frameworks, so called MOFs to store the hydrogen and. And they will use it in tanks on railway. But later they would like to use it also in buses and trucks. And H2 glass is also working with hydrogen. But in the glass industry and this project they explore how they can substitute the natural gas and the glass melting furnaces. They need a lot of energy and operate at extremely high temperatures and run continuously. So very important to do that here. And then the Last project is Flex4Fec. This project already ended last year and it was also not located in our groups. So I don't know much about it. But I can say that they were working about the flexibility and digitalization at factory and cluster level and they have investigated how industrial sites can adapt their energy use and how they can integrate renewable and reduce emissions. So you see they are like very different but the focus is like all the same. So the goal we share.
[00:05:19] Speaker B: Yeah, makes total sense. What I did realize however while you were speaking is that these projects represent some energy intensive industries.
So I was wondering what are the main challenges that they Face not the projects, the industries.
[00:05:35] Speaker C: So what we observe from all those projects, even though they are very different, I think the challenges are always the same. So I think that the technologies are often quite mature. But there is a combination of challenges from technical, economic and regulatory point of view. I think the main important point that is also interesting for all of those is industries and for all of those project is that all the industries have the pressure to decarbonize to do something because we should have acted already yesterday. So the time is really, we don't really have the time. Especially the hard to abate industries like the steel, cement, chemicals, they really rely on those high temperature processes, on the continuous operation.
So with today's technologies we really cannot decarbonize now, but we, we need to do it in the future.
Another issue is also that if the electricity and the gas prices rise, if you do the electrification, then also the production costs will go up. And the reason might be that people say, okay, we will not produce anymore in Europe, we will go somewhere else and we would like to avoid this. And so the products should become more expensive, more competitive on the market. Yeah, and this is what we are also trying to, to help with the project.
[00:06:46] Speaker B: Absolutely. I think these are some key important issues for the European Commission. Also keeping things in house. What were some key milestones in the projects?
[00:06:56] Speaker C: Yeah, I think about the individual projects. I will talk later. But for all the projects I think it's also interesting because we also share like common goals. It also depends on the type of project because we have research and innovation actions and we have innovation actions. So the first day have a TRL around three to five and the other ones it can go up to nine. So the milestones are always different. But I think what they all have in common is that they are moving from concepts on paper to real or to even industrial pilot setups. So we are testing technologies in real operating environments. So as an example, in the Core U project we are really injecting CO2, which is quite interesting because it doesn't only happen on paper. And this is very interesting to see how the results are turned into policy discussions, for example, in workshops. So I think for me this is maybe a key milestone that we reach in all of the projects to see how the results have really turned into reality.
[00:07:51] Speaker B: Let's go back to most HU and H2 glass projects because they're towards their ending if I'm not mistaken. And I was wondering what are the remaining issues, if there are any left to address.
[00:08:05] Speaker C: So first of all, the first project H2 plus it's not running towards the end because there was an amendment and now it's running another two years. But this is maybe also. Congratulations. An issue. Yeah, this is always an issue with also the big innovation actions because the TRL is so high and there's always something that can go wrong. There's so many things to consider and this happens like really often.
So now the status of the project is it has completed two successful test campaigns at two of the four industrial demonstration sites. So two to go at the moment. Next steps for this are on the way. So in the project a portable electrolyzer has been installed at this first industrial site in France. And this will start soon start to produce green hydrogen using hydropower, which can later be used for the burners and furnaces to melt the glass. Afterwards this electrolyzer will be moved to three additional industrial demonstration sites and there hydrogen will be produced as well. And with this approach the project will be able to assess the operational performance across different glass manufacturing processes and also different industrial settings. Because it's easy to show it in one setting, always a challenge to show it in more then our other hydrogen project, MOS Stage 2 has another focus.
They have reached an important milestone in the technology side. The final material organic frameworks, the MOF for hydrogen storage has been developed and the green synthesis and upscaling have been demonstrated. Right now the focus is on integrating this material in a storage tank to really have a full prototype ready. I think there from an economic perspective the challenge is that hydrogen still is very expensive, even the green one. And this has a very high impact on the techno economic assessment of the solutions.
[00:09:45] Speaker B: So turning to core, EU and captus, what are the challenges of carbon removal?
[00:09:51] Speaker C: Yeah, the question is very difficult because the value chain is very long. So if you start with the carbon capture and end with the carbon storage, there's so much to consider.
But I think the main answer to this is the scale. So the technologies really need to move from the individual sites to system level solutions.
For example, in the Koryo project we are exploring how so called CCS hubs can be established across Europe. Meaning that they will use a shared infrastructure. This will reduce cost and motivate the people to do that because also risk can be reduced.
Another big challenge in my opinion is the social acceptance, maybe more for CCs than for CCU because when you store CO2 beneath the seabed this raises concern among the people, which is also understandable because if you live just right across around the corner and you don't know about the technology. I understand that the people are a bit scared and worried about the safety here. It's crucial that there is good communication, that the public is properly engaged and not just the politicians. Yeah. But as far as I can tell from a project, this is one of, one of the biggest challenges staying at
[00:10:56] Speaker B: the CCUs, if I'm pronouncing them correctly. Can you tell us a little bit about the economics?
[00:11:01] Speaker C: Yeah. I think something that always sounds like completely wrong, but which is true is especially if you care about the climate, is that at the moment the cheapest option for industries is to emit the CO2 and not to store it or to utilize it because the other technologies are very expensive. It's like in our personal lives when we go to the supermarket, the climate friendly alternatives are often significantly more expensive than the conventional products.
[00:11:27] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:27] Speaker C: And in the long term, of course the climate change will cost us considerably more. But at the moment this is a real problem and I think whether ccus is worth it, it depends mainly on the political framework. So incentives need to be created for the industry, such as support for building infrastructure and cross border policies and also subsidies. And on the subject of incentives, CO2 storage isn't actually linked to a specific product. And why should a company invest in something that doesn't generate product? This is the main challenge at the problem in the CCU sector there's a different because CO2 can be converted into products like renewable energy carriers and if these products can eventually compete with fossil fuels, this would be a good start. So this could be a combination having CCU where possible and CC as where needed in the end.
[00:12:17] Speaker B: So basically if I understood correctly, in the short term it might be a little bit more expensive, but in the long term it could be a viable solution that will actually save a lot of money and maybe the environment.
[00:12:28] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:12:31] Speaker B: Is carbon capture an alternative to decarbonization of processes or a temporary stopgap? However,
[00:12:38] Speaker C: I think it's not an alternative and it's also not temporary. So I think in the future it should be seen as an addition. At the moment I think it's very important because we don't yet have the technologies to decarbonize. But the long term goal should BE to reduce CO2 emissions as much as possible.
Of course there are also other processes like the electrification or the hydrogen, but there will always be processes where CO2 cannot be avoided. And we also have to CO2 in the, in the air. And this is precisely where the carbon management comes in. I believe that this is also a Key point for the key criticism that we have that I was talking about before.
So companies could use this as a greenwashing argument. They could say, I can keep producing CO2 because we can store it under a seabed and everything's fine, I can get rid of it, but I think it shouldn't be viewed that way. So there are also a lot of policies needed, like also hierarchies, what to do with the kind of emissions and then also the need to reduce the emissions before removing them. So yeah, a lot of things to do.
[00:13:38] Speaker B: Yes. And a lot of challenges, if I understood correctly.
[00:13:41] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:13:41] Speaker B: How will these projects contribute to addressing these challenges?
[00:13:45] Speaker C: So I think in Captus we are basically killing two birds with one stone. So we are using the CO2 to produce renewable energy carriers. So showing also the people, we are really using this and making something with benefit from that because otherwise we would need CO2 that would be produced from fossil resources for that. And we are also using renewable energy for this so we can achieve real benefits for the climate. And in Koryu, I was talking before about the CCS hubs. So we are exploring four different routes. We have a real world demonstration in Greece and we are exploring conceptual routes in Czech Republic, Ukraine and in Poland and talked with the stakeholders. And also in the project we try to see where the regional differences and needs are, including policies and regulations. We try to learn from some regions and try to see what we can make better.
So the goal is that we can enable this hub deployment across Europe in the future. And as part of the project, as mentioned, we are talking stakeholders, we're trying to see where their needs are and trying to enable a dialogue.
[00:14:49] Speaker B: I want to come back a little bit to the energy heavy industries that participate or represented by the projects. Also makes sense to what you just said. How were those industries selected? I'm wondering.
[00:15:02] Speaker C: And this is always a part of the proposal phase, so for every project it depends because I wasn't involved in the proposals for all of those projects. But I can say that in Captus it's a very good example because the participating industries are the ones that you first name. When it comes to hard to bait industries, it's like the usual suspects like steel, chemical.
We mentioned glass before and so we have cement.
So it's very good to have those use cases for a project like this because you could do it with another industry. But then later you show that in the important industries it is not working. This is how we choose that also to give a bit more weight into the proposals with Core eu, it's similar. The industries are of course, players situated along the whole. They would say a lot of industrial players when it comes from capture to storage.
But something that is interesting, we're also choosing industries that are not directly the ones that you would expect. We have two major oil companies in Coryu. These are companies that say, we would like to be involved in this in the future, we would like to change and we would like to see what we can do and want to use the results from the project for our own work.
And I think this is obviously a great added value.
[00:16:11] Speaker B: Can you share some key development milestones?
[00:16:15] Speaker C: So in Coreyu we are just entering the third year, so we will really be getting up full speed this year. It's always in the big projects at the beginning you're also doing a lot of work. But then in the last year or in the last two years, there the real things are happening. The demo plants are running and the final experiments. A lot of our innovations are already in place and they are waiting to be put in use. For example, we now have a storage permit for our demonstration in Greece. The gas cylinders that we will use for the CO2 transport, they are ready for use. They have developed sensors that are available as prototypes thousands last year. And the capture plant that we will use, it was produced in another project, but it is now also on site and ready to capture our CO2 that will be injected.
So we can really get started this year with the operational work. So I think we have reached milestones already, but the key milestones, they will come later.
With Captus, it's a similar situation. We are entering the last year now and waiting for the demonstration plants on all the routes. So they wear or are about to be delivered to their final sites and then the CO2 will be captured and will be transformed to the renewable energy carriers. So I think after this year we can share more about the milestones that we reached.
[00:17:27] Speaker B: Excellent. But I would like, as we're approaching towards the end of our discussion, I would like to stay a little bit in current affairs and a little bit to the future. So I would like you to tell me what are the current status of the projects?
Sorry, what is the current status of the projects and what are the next steps?
[00:17:46] Speaker C: Yeah, so as mentioned before, we are now doing the last preparations for the final phase. So we have the innovations ready that have been developed during the last two years. This is. So I think the status is like online for all the projects, but not that we are waiting, but everything has been prepared in core you now for the injection and then after the injection there will be a lot of monitoring and for this the test runs have been done now and after the injection they will be done again. And in Captos it's the same. So the basic things have been done, the reactors have been developed and yeah, we are, we are actually just waiting for everything to be delivered and then we will take full speed.
[00:18:23] Speaker B: Katrina, as my final question to you, I would like to know what happens at the end of the project and I mean it in terms of how they may continue if they get a second life or how their findings can get incorporated into policy.
[00:18:41] Speaker C: That's a very good question. This usually becomes clear as the project progresses or ends also along with the commission with what the commission requires. So also again taking care as an example, because this is the project I'm involved in most. So the call for proposals explicitly states that the project was intended to serve as some kind of demonstration for follow up projects such as Innovation Fund.
So it means that the truly large industrial application. So the commission also ensures that the results are put to further use for the exploitation requirement. So this is the obligation to ensure the results are actually brought to market or implemented and that project projects do not end gathering dust in a. In a drawer. And it's often the case that a project in projects that a continuation automatically arises within the framework of another project. So by the end of the project and the consortium thinks about what went well, what didn't went well, then they try to identify other opportunities to put it on even a higher scale. As regard policies, we are of course not the policymakers, but through the project officers we have a direct line to the commission and also the opportunity to actively feed our results into the progress with the process with via workshops or policy briefs. And we share our results and lessons learned with them. And we definitely believe that indirectly through the projects we can have a very positive influence also on the policy landscape and developments. And of course many activities like our stakeholder dialogue, we also hope to have them as well after the project and not only within the project.
[00:20:12] Speaker B: Exactly. And I think the commission is very interested in the continuation of projects. That's why it gives a very, very important and specific focus in the exploitation part of the project.
[00:20:27] Speaker C: Absolutely.
[00:20:28] Speaker B: Katrin, thank you very much. This was a very interesting conversation. I learned a few things and not to mention a few acronyms also. And I hope to see you and Steinbeck in athen lit in 2026 in Vienna.
[00:20:43] Speaker C: Yeah, thank you very much.
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