MAGHRENOV Project Kick Off Meeting

MAGHRENOV Project, aiming at support innovation in the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency sector in the Mediterranean basin, celebrated its Kick Off Meeting last 16th and 17th December 2013 in Barcelona. Here you can get the programme and pictures of the meeting, where MED-SPRING was invited to participate.

ABOUT MAGHRENOV 

MAGHRENOV aims to support innovation in the Renewable Energy & Energy Efficiency (RE&EE) sector in the Mediterranean basin. The Consortium brings together partners from Europe and MAGHREB countries, whose shared goal is to establish a common Euro-Mediterranean innovation space.

The common innovation area shall be built around three major objectives of MAGHRENOV:

  • Building human resource and knowledge capacity and fostering innovation on Mediterranean RE&EE markets
  • Bringing together RE&EE initiatives in the EU and Mediterranean Partner Countries (MPC) in order to support development of sustainable energies and to establish dynamic Research and Innovation Systems
  • Creating mobility of young academics among businesses and research sector in the EU and MPC

Following the objectives, MAGHRENOV activities are devoted to capacity building (human resources as well as research & innovation infrastructures) on one hand, and to business creation, including joint financial support to EuroMed innovation projects in the RE&EE sector on the other.

Under Capacity Building, MAGHRENOV addresses both human resources and the capturing and structuring of valuable knowledge in the knowledge database. The capacity building activities are designed to enable further RE&EE innovations, and provide a sound basis for optimal business creation.

Human resources actions are focused on facilitating the emergence of so-called ‘game changers’ (about 5% of educated and trained people in the domain). Coming from across the Mediterranean basin, they will benefit from integrated technological and economics-based courses. Cross-border mobility at all career levels will favor the mastering of technological, economic, environmental, and societal factors of the EuroMed area, providing them with the expertise to drive innovation and business creation.

Capacity building activities also include the necessary infrastructures to ensure quality research, highly reliable technological benchmarks or high-level training programs that are key to achieving non-trivial and valuable innovation.

Finally, invaluable market intelligence will be gained from joint innovative technology roadmaps and competence mapping highlighting specific Euro-Mediterranean Innovation Space (EMIS) conditions for RE&EE for innovation and business creation.

Fostering innovation through quick start initiatives will include the provision of financial support for a limited number of trans-Mediterranean joint innovation projects financed by KIC SE, ANME and IRESEN. Action should then be enlarged with other funding actors, e.g. through an ERANET. Similar action should also be undertaken to accompany certain joint business creations by exploring specific framework conditions and opening access to InnoEnergy HighwayTM.

All the above activities should contribute and lead to the emergence of a political vision in which the converging potential of Research and Innovation Systems on both sides of the Mediterranean will be assessed together with the constraints, possibly preventing full integration within a reasonable timeframe. These lessons-learned will constitute a policy support dimension of the MAGHRENOV project.

To know more about the project, please visit MAGHRENOV website.