The European Commission, Directorate-General for Research, commissioned a consortium consisting of the Institute for Futures Studies and Technology Assessment (IZT) and Frost and Sullivan (www.frost.com) to analyse the status and prospects of European non-nuclear energy research funding, comparing the research portfolios of the Commission, the Member States and the main competitors, the USA and Japan.

Among other things, it became clear that the overarching goals of energy research in Europe, the USA and Japan are quite comparable, but that the focus in the USA was on reducing dependence on oil imports, Japan closely linked its research efforts to the export potential of its industrial companies, while Europe sought a balance between security of energy supply, the development of competitiveness and the development of environmental performance.

This different prioritisation was reflected in the structure and amount of research funding. Research funding in Europe provided proportionately more funding for renewable energies than Japan and the USA, which focussed their funding more on efficiency technologies. Europe also pursued research strands, such as marine technologies, which were hardly supported in the other two regions.

In addition to an overall comparison of the non-nuclear energy research portfolios, the study also analysed eleven research fields in detail - from hydrogen and fuel cells to geothermal energy, as well as cross-cutting topics such as socio-economic accompanying research and electrical grids.

The final report is available on the European Commission's website.

More info