Introduction

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particularly significant (Henry, Sedgwick and Robinson 2013). These cartographies in progress help perform coordination of cooperative approaches to knowledge creation and innovation in a field where such approaches are notoriously difficult to render productive. In this chapter, I will also introduce the evolvement of the SEEIT partnership and explain why I consider the partnership to provide us with relevant empirical material for studying processes of systemic innovation and open up for how a focus on cartographic operations may help us refine our understanding of how processes of systemic innovation in energy research evolve and the organizing dynamics hereof. The chapter thus serves as a first, empirical step into the establishment of a cartographic approach which, besides explaining the importance of cartographic processes in the empirical field, consists of an analytical and methodological chapter.

3.2. The Strategic Energy Technology Plan and EERA

“A new way of working at Community level requires an inclusive, dynamic and flexible means of guiding this process, defining priorities and proposing actions – a collective approach to strategic planning. Decision-makers in the Member States, industry, and the research and financial communities have to start to communicate and take decisions in a more structured and mission-oriented way, conceiving and implementing actions together with the European Commission within a cooperative framework. We need a new governance structure.”

[Strategic Energy Technology Plan, EU COM 2007b: 9]

In the EU innovation and research policy frameworks (EU COM 2009, 2010a, 2011a, EIT 2009) and energy transitions (EU COM 2007a, 2007b, 2010b, 2011b), strategic

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alliances and partnerships are repeatedly pointed to as central for improving coordination and cooperation. This has been a key feature of European innovation policy making for more than a decade (Borrás 2003) and does not belong to the energy field exclusively. In the energy field, vast resources have been invested in building up an agenda for an overall energy transition to take place across Europe. The EU Commission’s General Directorate for Energy (DG Energy) has made a comprehensive effort to creating such a European energy transition agenda involving industry, research and governments. The Strategic Energy Technology plan (the SET plan, EU COM 2007a) is the key policy instrument for formulating and processing this agenda (EU COM 2007b).

The SET plan was initiated in 2007 with the purpose of building a coordinated momentum towards long term energy system transitions using 2020 and 2050 objectives as a strategic horizon as projected in An Energy Policy for Europe (EU COM 2007c). The SET plan has focused on mobilizing key actors from the energy sector and the European energy research community and has been a catalyst for the formation of a number of strategic alliances across Europe devoted to influence the direction of policy making. For example, a number of Technology Platforms have emerged as part of the SET plan structure. These platforms help frame a direct involvement of the energy industry and create linkages between industrial actors and research institutions. The SET plan has thus established a process where the politics of energy transition agenda setting can play out involving a variety of actors. One of the main types of activities is the construction and ongoing negotiation of technology road maps for the different technological fields structuring the SET plan. This includes wind technology, solar technology, bioenergy technology, energy efficiency (the “smart cities initiative”), electricity grids, fuel cells and hydrogen, sustainable nuclear energy and carbon capture and storage. Each field gathers a composition of actors from

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research and industry and varies a lot in terms of how far these constellations have reached in performing coordination and cooperation effectively. For example, the wind initiative and the smart cities initiative have in different ways come further than the carbon capture and storage initiative. Furthermore, the SET plan comprises a set of cross-cutting governance initiatives including the SET plan Steering Group, the SET plan Information System (SETIS) and the European Energy Research Alliance (EERA).

The latter was formed as a “bottom up” movement gathering the 15 strongest (within sustainable energy research) energy research centres from Europe. The Danish national energy research centre Risø, today an integrated part of DTU, was one of the driving actors in creating EERA and continues to play a central role in its activities. The coordinator of SEEIT, Jørgen Kjems, is the former director of Risø and is therefore closely connected to the European landscape of energy research institutions. The

“bottom up” image of EERA is of course somewhat misguiding given the status of the constituent partners which are powerful research centres such as the German Helmholz Institutes, the French CEA, and similar national research centres with a historically strong and still institutionalized position in energy technology research. In several cases these institutions was formed and continues to function as the national bodies for nuclear energy research, including in some cases, national weapon systems research.

Thus, EERA was founded as an elite group of strong research centres in need of a common strategic platform for participating in the implementation of the SET plan.

Today, EERA gathers more members including universities, but with the constituent research centre partners populating the executive committee. EERA focuses first and foremost on creating stronger coordination and cooperation within European energy technology research. For this purpose, a number of joint programmes has been formed around technological fields and, as in the SET plan process, different joint programmes

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show different degrees of success with respect to accomplishing their coordination and cooperation objectives.

The interaction between the SET plan and EERA has matured to become very close in the sense that the SET plan presents itself as integrating EERA and EERA presents itself as the enabling body for the SET plan to become effective. At a policy level, this linkage has become a mutually supportive composition of agenda setting engines which informs European priorities and approaches in relation to governing, driving and realizing the long term energy system transition objectives which the EU Commission has set out to reach in its 2020 and 2050 policy frameworks (EU COM 2010b, EU COM 2011b). Clearly, this constellation is far from the only strong alliance when it comes to influencing energy (innovation) policies in Europe. The various industrial organizations and lobby alliances play a big role in what we can characterize as the overall “cartographic battle” of energy transitions. The point of highlighting the SET plan and EERA in particular is to contextualize SEEIT because these agenda setting actors have had a particular strong influence on how SEEIT was created and how it has evolved as a partnership. Furthermore, the SET plan as well as EERA and other actor formations in the field such as the SEEIT partnership are closely interwoven at the level of which persons are involved. This has not been the focus of the analysis pursued here, but one realizes quickly when participating in e.g. SEEIT partnership meetings that there is some redundancy in who participates in these agenda setting processes. Thus, as already mentioned, the SEEIT coordinator is active in other policy influencing bodies parallel to SEEIT and this is true for several of the other SEEIT steering group members. Similar observations can be made in the case of the wind energy joint programme in EERA where a limited group of DTU researchers, operating on behalf of DTU, are deeply involved across policy agenda setting alliances with a bearing on future priorities in European wind energy research. The agenda setting

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apparatus in European energy research thus comprise first and foremost expertise institutions within energy technology research – in most cases well-established energy research institutions with a long track record as dominant energy research actors in their respective national contexts as well as on a European level.