Green New Year thoughts for 2022

By Glenda Napier, CEO, Energy Cluster Denmark

2022 will be an exciting year! We in the energy cluster need to work more in green innovation partnerships with energy cluster companies and knowledge institutions – and we need to collaborate in larger green partnerships across sectors.

For the energy cluster, cooperation with the transport sector in particular will be essential in 2022. Together, we must strengthen the development, scaling up and commercialisation of Power-to-X activities and green fuels for transport. We also need to get closer to the digital industries and the digitalisation cluster and work together to support increased commercial use of the many energy data available in the energy sector. This is how we ensure energy-efficient sector coupling.

2022 will also be the year when innovation partnerships and consortia grow: we will see more partners working together on the biggest challenges of the green transition, which can only be solved in partnerships. This applies, for example, to sector coupling, the world’s first energy islands, the decommissioning of wind turbine blades or geological storage of CO2 (CCS). As the green societal challenges become bigger and more complex, it requires many different competencies and new value chains. At the same time, we will continue to see smaller consortia and groups of companies and researchers solve many of the more concrete technological challenges that contribute to cost-out, LCOE and energy efficiency. This applies, for example, to the innovation group that develops a drone that can deliver packages 20 km out at sea.

We’re well on our way. Throughout 2021, we have already implemented many green innovation partnerships, and we are not beginners in collaborating and connecting sectors. 2022 will require us all to fold out the willingness and appetite for cooperation to new partners – also from other sectors. This is necessary to succeed with the green transition and not least the sector coupling that the world hopes Denmark can deliver and excel in as the first in the world.

Happy New Year to all of you – I look forward to the cooperation.