EU-SOLARIS: The European Infrastructure for Concentrated Solar Thermal and Solar Chemistry Technologies

EU-SOLARIS project is a European project, co-funded by the 7th framework programme of the European Union. It is a Research Infrastructure (RI) initiative aimed to foster and promote the scientific and technological development of Concentrating Solar Thermal (CST) and Solar Chemistry technologies. EU-SOLARIS aims to create a new legal entity to explore and implement new and improved rules and procedures for the overall coordination and join exploitation of the main European RI for CST and Solar Chemistry technologies, in order to optimize RI development and Research and technology Development (R&D) coordination. It is expected to be the first of its kind, where industrial needs and private funding will play a significant role. The success of the EU-SOLARIS initiative will be the establishment of a new governance body, aided by sustainable financial models for this unique European large and distributed research infrastructure in the CST and Solar Chemistry fields. EU-SOLARIS is expected to be an important tool in consolidating Europe's leadership in these areas. This will be accomplished by linking the research community and the industry involved in the CST sector and providing them the research infrastructures needed to innovate and advance the state of the art of CST and Solar Chemistry technologies. EU-SOLARIS is also expected to increase the efficient use of the economic and human resources required throughout the European research context and to provide efficient resource management to complement research and to avoid unnecessary technological duplication and repetition.This article presents the vision, objectives, activities and current status of the EU-SOLARIS project and discusses the most important - expected to be achieved - outcomes of the project, which is currently at its last year of its preparatory phase.