Energy Dialogue 2014
KTH Energy Platform's annual conference, Energy Dialogue, was held on 20 November 2014. The event attracted more than 240 attendees and received many positive reviews. We are grateful to all participants who joined the conference and made this event a great success!
The Energy Dialogue, hosted by the KTH Energy Platform, is our annual conference aimed at profiling the wide range of energy-related research being conducted at KTH. This year’s event took place on 20 November and attracted more than 240 attendees. The participants included PhD students and senior researchers from KTH as well as external guests from national funding agencies and industry.
The topic of the conference was “Funding Strategies for Energy Research and Innovation” featured by the high-level representatives from funding agencies such as Swedish Energy Agency, VINNOVA and DG Energy.
Plenary Programme
The plenary programme was opened by representative from Swedish Energy Agency, Dr. Remy Kolessar, Director Research and Innovation, who talked about the agency's investing strategies and priority areas for energy research. Following two examples of successful KTH projects funded by Swedish Energy Agency were presented by Prof. Ivo Martinac, Building Service and Energy Systems, and Josefin Wandel, Department of Sustainable Development, Environmental Science and Engineering.
Remy Kolessar_The Swedish Energy Agency Funding Strategies for Energy Research.pdf (pdf 2.0 MB)
Josefin Wangel_Life2053.pdf (pdf 1.4 MB)
The next session of the Energy Dialogue was devoted to international strategies for energy research development and was opened with presentation by representative from DG Energy, Unit C2 - New Energy Technologies, Innovation and Clean Coal, Henrik Dam, who talked about European policy and priorities for 2020 and beyond. Prof. Mark Howells, Division of Energy System Analysis, KTH, continued the session with the presentation about the European Commission’s 3 year’s project Energy ‘Think tank’ INSIGHT_E. This project will provide the European Commission with independent, objective and multi-disciplinary policy recommendations. Another European project funded within FP7 Programme was presented by Carina Lagergren, Division of Applied Electrochemistry, KTH, and showed the possibility of producing electricity from olive oil residue via PEM fuel cell.
Henrik Dam_European Energy Strategies, Policy and Priorities for 2020 and Beyond.pdf (pdf 1.5 MB)
Mark Howells_INSIGHT_E The European Comission's Energy think tank.pdf (pdf 1009 kB)
Carina Lagergen_From Olive Oil Residues to Electricity via PEM Fuel Cell.pdf (pdf 794 kB)
The last session of the programme was about VINNOVA’s vision on the future development of energy research and innovation and demonstration of KTH projects supported by VINNOVA. Charlotte Brogren, Director General, VINNOVA gave an inspiring presentation about the importance of innovation and innovation agency to meet future challenges. One of the VINNOVA’s initiative led by KTH, Strategic Innovation Agenda - “Smart Sustainable Cities” (SSC) was presented by Mattias Höjer, Professor at KTH Center for Sustainable Communication. This agenda integrates smart city and sustainable city research and innovation, aims to build capacity and critical mass in SSC to enable a sustainability transition in cities worldwide. The plenary programme was ended by presentation of another VINNOVA project performed within SiC Power Center and led by KTH professor Hans-Peter Nee, Department of Electrical Energy Conversion and Dr. Per Ranstad, Alstom Power.
Charlotte Brogren_VINNOVA_Innovation for a Changing and Challenging World.pdf (pdf 2.2 MB)
Mattias Höjer_Strategic Innovation Agenda-Smart Sustainalbe City.pdf (pdf 865 kB)
Awards
As previous years, the event hosted competitions with prizes sponsored by Vattenfall, ABB and the KTH Energy Platform. During the lunch the participants of Energy Dialogue 2014 were able to take part in selection of the best and the most communicative poster prepared by KTH PhD students as well as to vote for the best PhD elevator pitch presented during the plenary programme.
The winners of the Poster Award, Javier Barrientos, Fatima Pardo, Magali Boutonnet and Sven Järås, at the Department of Chemical Engineering and Technology, were awarded with the first prize of 30 000 SEK from ABB for the poster “Biofuels and energy from olive oil industry waste”. The two second best posters “What is seasonal energy storage” by Arefeh Hesaraki, at the Department of Civil and Architectural Engineering, and “Sustainable Thermal Energy Services for the Built Environment” by Jose Castro Flores, at the Department of Energy Technology, received a conference grant of 10 000 SEK from the Energy Platform.
The winner of the Best Pitch Award, a PhD student at the Division of Energy Processes, Chi Zhang, was awarded with a conference grant of 10 000 SEK from KTH Energy Platform for skillful and professional presentation of her research about implementation of Photovoltaic water pumping system (PVWP) of grasslands and farmlands.
Also this year the Vattenfall Energy Award for the best MSc thesis projects in the energy field was handed out for the third time. The jury consisted of four professors from KTH, a representative from Vattenfall and the Ny Teknik newspaper selected three best MSc thesis project and announced the winners during the Energy Dialogue on 20 November. The first prize of 25 000 SEK was awarded to Bram van der Heijde, former KIC InnoEnergy MSc Smart Cities student, for his thesis on how the energy consumption of nearly 15 000 buildings in Stockholm can be improved. The second prize of 10 000 SEK went to Rita Bailão Martins Fernandes (MSc RENE), who wrote about "Efficient Volvo Bus Cooling System, Using Electrical Fans - A comparison between hydraulic and electrical fans" and finally the third prize of 5 000 SEK was received by Judith Maresa Hartl (MSc SELECT) for her thesis work "The Energy Kiosk Model for Electrification, Status Quo and Future Strategies".
We would like to express special thanks to the sponsors of awards, ABB and Vattenfall, for the generosity, cooperation and support of KTH young researchers!