Cáceres hopes to become the premier innovation centre for energy transition research

The Spanish National Centre for Energy Research and Storage, located there, is already hiring

CNIAE is the acronym of a new innovation centre that will open doors in the Spanish city of Cáceres. What is remarkable about it is that it represents the national authorities’ ambition to make the country a pioneer in solving some of the most urgent problems in the field of energy transition from fossil fuels to renewable sources. Researchers in that centre will try to figure out how to transport and how to store that kind of energy in a way that truly permits large scale applications.

The Centre plans to reach its full operating capacity in 2025

CNIAE is the Spanish acronym for National Centre for Energy Research and Storage. More specifically, it will allow the deployment of lithium-ion-based energy storage technologies and industrial applications of hydrogen - its production, storage and transportation in the large-scale hydrogen industry.

The Centre will be located on the University Campus of Cáceres on an area of ​​120,000 square meters and will consist of three buildings: a main one, a scientific and technical infrastructure pilot plant and a technology incubator.

The objective of the CNIAE is to experiment on the entire energy storage cycle, from the physical chemistry of materials to their scaling and application. In the era of European, national and regional policies aimed at promoting the ecological transition, opportunities arise in which energy takes on special relevance.

In the contemporary mixed scenario of opportunities and climate emergencies, CNIAE will allow not only to research and develop energy storage technologies but to test them in suitable environments locally in the region of Extremadura.

The plan is to boost the promotion of an advanced energy industry with great potential for projects related to industrial decarbonization. The work is already on, and the first step is to find suitable leaders.

At the start of this week, the Official Gazette of Extremadura (DOE) published a call for the hiring of three scientific directors, each to head one of the research units at the facility. The call also included the position of a pilot plant technical director.

The main investment for its development will be made with funds from the European Recovery and Resilience Mechanism through an agreement between the Ministry of Science and Innovation and the Ministry of Economy, Science and Digital Agenda of the Junta de Extremadura.

Reportedly the CNIAE already counts with a budget of 70 million euros, contributed from the various partners in this initiative.