Provando et Riprovando

EPS-SIF International School on Energy

Course I - "New strategies for energy generation, conversion and storage"

30 July - 4 August 2012

Directors: L. Cifarelli (Universitą di Bologna), F. Wagner (Technischen Universität, München), D. Wiersma (LENS, Firenze)

The primary goal of the School will be to analyse all physics fields with relevance for the technologies of energy production, conversion, transmission and savings for their potential and the need for more research and development to unfold it. For this purpose, basic lectures and topical seminars will be organised. Another goal of the Course will be to motivate national physics communities to form energy working groups (if not yet done) to introduce the physics related topics into the national debate.

The European energy supply situation is very inhomogeneous. There are countries with nearly 100% CO2-free, others with exclusively fossil-based electricity production. Some countries ban the use or future use of nuclear energy, for others, their electricity production is based on it and they build or plan new power reactors; some export electricity to a large extent other import it; some have used the last years to approach the Kyoto goals, others have moved away from it; some invest heavily in Renewable Energies (RE), for others, they do not play a major role. Despite this disparity, Europe has specific goals. The most ambitious ones are the 2020 targets. In order to meet these goals, all EU-27 countries have to increase their present RE share. The extent to which this has to happen shows a wide distribution which again portrays the inhomogeneity of the EU energy supply situation. Also the energy efficiency has, in all European countries, to be increased clearly beyond the present measures. For the EU plans, the energy efficiency has to be reduced on the basis of the present level of energy intensity (which has been growing in the last decades) and the present technology.

The idea is therefore to have a School covering all fields and serving as a forum of discussion to bring together all scientists in the various energy related areas with the side effect of improving the cooperation between sometimes competing fields. The various energy techniques where physics is involved should be analysed for their potential in case more research should be invested, also identifying the research fields and scientific strengths in the various countries. Most important is, however, to attract the scientists active in the field and their students to the School. To achieve this objective, a possible structure could be to have plenary sessions with invited speakers from all fields in the morning and several parallel topical sessions in the afternoon: e.g. solar photovoltaic and photothermal sources, water, wind, biomass, fossils, fission, fusion, energy saving technology, climate issues with physics and other topics where physics plays a role, etc.

As physics alone will not solve the energy problem, the effort could be extended to chemistry and materials research. One could think about a combined interdisciplinary Course. Moreover a presentation of activities and views of the USA and Asia should be included.

List of Topics:

  • Energy from fossil sources
  • Nuclear energy, fission and fusion physics
  • Renewable energy
  • Solar energy and photovoltaics
  • Wind generated energy
  • Energy from bio-sources
  • Energy, CO2 emissions, environment and global scenario
  • Energy storage, saving and efficiency
  • Energy for future transportation
  • Energy and communication

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