Collective projects

The ESRC Large Grants competition invites proposals from eligible individuals and research teams to take forward an ambitious research agenda with the potential to generate significant economic or societal impact. Similar to our standard research grants, we welcome proposals for standard research projects, large-scale surveys, infrastructure projects and methodological developments in any area of the social sciences. We actively encourage interdisciplinarity both within and beyond the social sciences.

The energy system in Europe will follow a transition to a low-carbon future in accordance with the COP21 agreements and the European Union targets and objectives set for 2020, 2030 and 2050.

The energy sector is evolving rapidly creating new job opportunities while requiring new skills and expertise to be developed. The challenges are significant. Over the coming years, the growing low-carbon energy sector requires many employees to be educated, trained or re-skilled. At the same time, energy innovation creates a massive need for new talents, able to cope and conduct the energy transition with a systemic approach. Therefore curricula and programmes, including the modules organised in operating environment, need to be upgraded or new ones developed.

The implementation of the EU Energy Union transition towards a low-carbon economy poses significant technological, economic and social challenges, in particular for coal-intensive regions that have to prepare for the reduction or phasing-out of coal production, both due to market-driven trends and environmental policies. These regions need an effective roadmap to make the necessary transition to a more diversified economic base and a more sustainable energy system, while safeguarding the social cohesion for communities and regions dependent on coal production.

Commercial deployment of CCS requires a significant reduction of the energy intensity of the CO2 capture process for power plants or other energy-intensive industries, and a substantial decrease of the cost of capture. A continuous effort is needed to develop and demonstrate new and advanced capture technologies, including new materials.

Establishing the necessary infrastructure for safe and cost-effective CO2 transport and storage is of high importance in Europe. Early CCS projects will most likely explore CO2 storage sinks in the vicinity of capture points, and the required infrastructure will therefore most likely be initiated at national level in CO2 hubs and industrial clusters in order to achieve economies of scale by sharing CO2 transport and storage infrastructure. A cross border transport infrastructure is ultimately necessary to efficiently connect the CO2 hubs and industrial clusters to sinks.

The renewable energy technologies that will form the backbone of the energy system by 2030 and 2050 are still at an early stage of development today. Bringing these new energy conversion solutions, new renewable energy concepts and innovative renewable energy uses faster to commercialisation, taking into account social acceptance and secure and affordable energy supply, is challenging. These new technologies must not only have a commercial potential but they should also have a lower environmental impact and lower greenhouse gases emissions than the current renewable energy technologies.

An essential part of Europe's clean energy transition is the changing role of buildings from energy consumers to actively controlling and optimising indoor environment while contributing to energy system flexibility by ensuring distributed energy generation from renewable energy sources, energy storage, facilitate smart charging of EVs, load reduction through energy efficiency and load shifting through demand response.

Dnipro est le Partenariat Hubert Curien (PHC) franco-ukrainien. Il est mis en œuvre en France par les ministères de l'Europe et des Affaires étrangères (MEAE) et de l'Enseignement supérieur, de la Recherche et de l’Innovation (MESRI), et en Ukraine par le ministère de l’Education et pour la recherche

Les appels à candidatures de ce programme sont lancés sur un rythme bisannuel.