With a view to investigating possible funding opportunities for the IFRF’s European Flame Research Infrastructure in the next EU FP7 Capacities calls, IFRF Director Leonardo Tognotti attended a National Workshop in Rome last Monday.  The aim of the workshop was to present the Work Programme 2010 for Research Infrastructures (European Commission C(2009)5905 of 29 July 2009).

The Workshop presenters were two EU officers (representing DG Research and INFSO respectively) and an ESFRI delegate.  ESFI is the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures.  The speakers illustrated the main features of the calls and the parallel initiatives.

Call 6, which has a deadline of December 3, 2009, includes funding for Integrated Activities for existing infrastructures with a budget of about 162 M€.  It is a targeted call, with topics in Energy including solar, offshore renewable and biomass conversion and biorefinery.  As such there is no possibility to repropose the IFRF European Flame Research Infrastructure idea as it stands.

However a call which does have the potential to offer some important funding availability will be Call 8, expected for winter 2010.  This will be another targeted call.  Although the topics have not yet been defined, there are some drafts circulating through the Commission. It would appear that carbon capture would be one of the topics closer to IFRF Members’ interests.

Thus as far as the IFRF’s EFRI initiative is concerned, the strategy will be to contact and liase with the EU delegate for  Energy and Engineering Infrastructures in the Capacities programme in order to discuss the opportunity of promoting the  EFRI concept and tailoring a next proposal to fit the new EU targets.

More information in this regard will be published on the EFRI Forum late this week.  To read a previous MNM article about the EFRI programme, see issue No. 30