The REGENERA project—formed by of an eight-company consortium made up of DAM Group, ENGIE, Sorigué, Hidroquimia, Tyris AI, H2B2, AIGUASOL and Exolum—seeks to develop innovative technologies to efficiently and economically store surplus renewable energies and use them in industrial process for the production of green fuels, hydrogen, methane and hythane. These can be used to generate heat, electricity, used as precursors for other chemicals and/or used in transport to drive sustainable mobility. All this using artificial intelligence to optimise the use of energy resources.

The 40-month research project is based on the expectation that by 2050, energy from renewable sources will increase from 25% today to 86%.

“The main characteristic of renewable energies (wind and solar) is that they depend on nature, meaning their production is variable—on both a daily and monthly basis. This results in the need to increase the reliability of supply, not only with fossil fuels, but also with energy storage systems, which are key to the development and promotion of sustainable energy”, explain the companies involved in the project.
In this context, the integration of storage systems to balance supply and demand, in both the short and long term, is essential to accelerating the decarbonisation of the energy system and achieving the targets set by the European Commission in the Green Deal to comply with the Paris Climate Accords. 

“REGENERA aims to help transform the Spanish energy system by reducing dependence on fossil fuels, improving the integration and management of renewable energies. It is possible to reduce CO2 emissions and have greater energy independence and, therefore, a less dependent, more competitive and climate-neutral economy in 2050”, claim the project’s partners. 

Reducing costs and increasing the competitiveness of renewable fuels

During its implementation, the REGENERA project will investigate two innovative strategies that will increase sustainability in the future through two main drivers: decreasing the cost of storage and increasing the economic competitiveness of renewable fuel production.

 “The first strategy is three types of electricity storage technology with capacity to store large amounts of energy in the long term and through the production of renewable fuels (H2, CH4 and Hythane). The second is a smart energy optimisation/management system based on machine learning models for implementation into industrial processes. This makes it possible, on the one hand, to adapt the energy demand of industries to renewable energy production and, on the other, to recover some of their waste (water and/or CO2) for the production of renewable fuels through surplus renewable energies”, say the partners involved in the project. 

The REGENERA project, “Research into hybrid storage technologies and predictive models to transform industries in decentralised renewable energy management points”, is financed by funds from the Next Generation EU recovery plan for Europe and is part of the State R&D&I Programme “Science and Innovation Missions” of the Centre for the Development of Industrial Technology (CDTI).

This multi-sectoral consortium includes 6 leading research centres with experience and capacity in the management of disruptive projects that will seek to scale the results of this project to new international programmes, such as the Leitat Technology Centre, the Institute of Chemical Technology (ITQ), the Energy Technology Institute (ITE), the Institute of Telecommunications and Multimedia Applications (iTEAM), the Catalonia Institute for Energy Research (IREC) and the IMDEA Water Institute.