The 15th Strategic Energy Technology Plan (SET Plan) Conference was held as a hybrid event in Bled, Slovenia, on 25 and 26 November 2021. It was co-organised by the Republic of Slovenia's Ministry of Infrastructure under the Slovenian Presidency of the Council of the European Union and the European Commission.

This year's SET Plan Conference aimed to contribute to the current climate and energy policies debates. These are particularly relevant under the context of an unprecedented energy crisis at European level and the recovery and resilience investments and reforms carried out at the Member States level to address the economic and social impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Unlike previous occasions, the agenda of the event was organised around four different system-level, overarching content sets, contrasting with the traditional technology-specific approach, namely 1) energy to enable the transition; 2) energy for sustainable and inclusive society; 3) energy for smart industrial growth; and 4) the future of the SET Plan. This approach matches the most recent policy evolutions regarding the Clean Energy Transition, which have put forward the need for a cross-sectoral, interdisciplinary approach towards climate neutrality. Moreover, it corresponds with EERA's call, summarised in its recently launched White Paper on the Clean Energy Transition, to break existing governance and policy silos and promote a systemic, holistic, cross-sectoral and interdisciplinary transition perspective.

Some of the main key takeaways of this relevant Conference for the energy community can be summarised as follows:

• Europe needs to focus even more on clean energy research and innovation in the years and decades to come. Research and innovation must take a central role in the Clean Energy Transition.
• Increased investment: Europe is "ahead of the pack when it comes to high-value inventions in renewables and energy efficiency". However, it needs the proper funding to get the best ideas from the drawing board to reality.
• Even greater than currently existing collaboration and more robust engagement between the EU and Member States/Associated Countries is fundamental for a thriving innovation ecosystem. The acceleration in the development and deployment of clean energy solutions will only be possible through effective collaboration. The link between research and energy policies should also be enhanced.
• Every EU Member State needs to develop stronger national energy plans to become climate-neutral, and the SET Plan should represent the core mechanism for cooperation between them.
• As such, the SET Plan is a pivotal tool to deliver on the Green Deal and Fit for 55, and it will be profoundly revamped to deliver on their objectives. In this respect, the European Commission called for it to be taken to the next level by reflecting on five issues:
  1. Accelerating the implementation of its strategies (e.g., the hydrogen strategy, the strategy on energy systems integration, the offshore wind strategy), aligning targets and objectives to the Green Deal and reinforcing it, and exploring a more mission-oriented approach.
  2. Including a more "human-centric" approach to the Clean Energy Transition and supporting the social dimension. People need clean, affordable, secure, and safe energy in all activities, and citizen engagement should be a core principle.
  3. Strengthening synergies between Horizon Europe and the work in Clean Energy Transition by international organisations. Horizon Europe was designed with synergies in mind, and the SET Plan involvement in setting up the Horizon Europe co-funded partnership on the Clean Energy Transition is recognised.
  4. Reinforcing the governance and assuming more political visibility by revising its alignment to the new ERA (European Research Area) approach. Both develop an integrated European knowledge and research system requiring strengthening ambitions at European and National levels and stronger links in their work with industry.
  5. Playing an essential role in education and training. Education plays a key role in disseminating evidence-based knowledge as well as for adjusting skills to societal needs. For example, the SET Plan could explore supporting National goals by promoting urgently needed skills for the transition.

In the context of the revamping, a co-creation process is expected to occur trough 2022. Joint work across different stakeholder groups will be carried out with the above-stated priorities in mind. An announcement is to be expected by the next SET Plan Conference by Autumn 2022 in Prague, Czech Republic.

Moreover, the 2021 SET Plan Progress Monitoring Report was launched in the context of this year's event. The main developments of the last 12 months were summarised together with the achievements of the 14 SET Plan Implementation Working Groups (IWGs). Of particular relevance for the EERA community was the highlight of its role by bringing in the research community's knowledge and expertise to catalyse the Clean Energy Transition and contribute to a low carbon society. Along with this year's Conference, the report was one of the key contributions to strengthening and improving the SET Plan in 2022.

The European Energy Research Alliance (EERA) recognises its strategic priorities reflected in the messages promoted throughout the Conference and as the research pillar of the SET Plan stands ready to support its revamping. For this purpose, it counts on the EERA strategic project SUPEERA (Support to the coordination of national research and innovation programmes in areas of activity of the European Energy Research Alliance). SUPEERA is rooted in and supports the SET Plan, and aims to integrate it into the broader context of the Clean Energy Transition to support Europe's strategic long-term vision.

The Alliance has also been carrying out intensive and extensive work through specialised task forces whose results could become instrumental in supporting the overhauling process of the SET Plan. Finally, EERA has already developed in its White Paper a conceptual framework to help policymakers define robust, actionable, and efficient pathways towards a just, sustainable, competitive, and climate-neutral society in an inclusive way. Ultimately, although technologies are a core and critical enabling factor of the green transition, they must be included into a broader societal transformation process to allow reaching net-zero.