NIFU Nordic Institute for Studies in Innovation, Research and Education

Oslo, Norway

NIFU is leading a research project: Technology Opportunities in Nordic Energy System Transitions: TOP-NEST. TOP-NEST is funded by Nordic Energy Research under the Nordic Council of Ministers. The research project started in 2011 and will go until 2015. The project team includes researchers from NIFU in Norway, VTT in Finland, Lund University in Sweden, DTU in Denmark and Riga Technical University in Latvia. The project seeks to guide industrial strategies and governments in making the transition to sustainable Nordic energy and transport systems towards 2050, and to enhance the competitive position of Nordic industries in the international market for clean technologies. NIFU analyse three technology platforms: liquid and gaseous biofuels, renewable electricity and hydrogen/fuel cells. The project will address following research questions: What are the main path-dependencies and potential new value chains arising from the three technology platforms when applied in sustainable energy and transport systems? What changes in organisational and institutional conditions are needed to facilitate sustainable transition pathways? What are the governance implications, in terms of industrial strategies, public policy and public-private cooperation? The project aims to identify viable transition pathways by identifying options for change in organisational and institutional conditions. This will encompass governance implications in terms of industrial strategies, public policy and public-private cooperation that are needed to realize the viable transition pathways. will focus on the potential need for coherence and integration across different policy domains (most notably energy and transport) and countries (both across the Nordic countries and vis-a-vis the EU). In the field of biofuels NIFU provides value-chain-analyses, studies of patenting, standardisation and certification, of public funded research, development and innovation projects and programmes and of collaborative publishing patterns. NIFU will carry out focus group interviews with experts from stakeholder organisations and will organise interactive workshops.