Themes

The i-SUP2014 conference has four central themes:

• ENERGY
• MATERIALS
  
• CHEMISTRY
• INVESTMENTS

and will primarily focus on growth and how the industry can achieve this in close co-operation with innovation, institutes and investors.

The issues that i-SUP2014 will address are:

• The improvement of industrial competitiveness through a proper combination of sustainable electricity generation and heat production. New business cases of intelligent networks, active demand control and energy storage are already now leading to new market opportunities.  Power to gas technologies are linking the energy system with gaseous industrial processes. On the energy supply side local energy sources such as geothermy offer innovative opportunities in a changing energy world.
• The production of chemical components from renewable resources such as biomass, waste and residues, including waste gases. The combination of CO₂ and H₂, esulting from peak shaving of renewable energy sources, may lead to a new feedstock, highly available in industrialized areas.  The use of new feedstock will not only lead to drop in chemicals, but also to innovative and more sustainable molecules. These new chemical building blocks will stimulate development of new, more performant and environmental friendly polymers, resins and coatings. Process intensification in new lead plants in Europe will reduce energy consumption and improve resource effectiveness.
• Access to raw materials at an affordable cost, essential for economic growth. This includes sustainable mining, material management, recycling technologies, material substitution and geopolitical trade in raw materials. One of the main innovation needs to reduce the EU’s dependency on raw materials, like rare earth metals, is to optimally exploit secondary resources. To this end, innovation along the entire materials reuse and recycling chain is required. In addition, breakthrough material developments are of key importance for future chemistry as well as energy harvesting and storage technologies.
• Economic growth implies financial resources: there’s nothing new to it. Nowaday’s challenges however are bigger than ever. Climate change and growing resource shortages threaten our traditional way of thinking about health, wealth and economic growth. They imply structural changes calling for approaches and technologies of a different kind: clean technologies. Fostering such game changing technologies require new and innovative cross-sectoral cooperation and venture models.