(From left) Argonne Director Peter Littlewood and Maroš Šefčovič, Vice President of the European Commission, in charge of its Energy Union, visit the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility, which is home to the Mira supercomputer.
A group of delegates from the European Commission led by Vice President Maroš Šefčovič, who heads its Energy Union, spent Saturday, June 4, 2016, visiting Argonne and talking with lab leadership and scientists.
The European Commission is the executive body of the European Union (EU), tasked with proposing legislation, setting objectives and implementing EU policy and the budget. The mission of its Energy Union, the counterpart of the U.S. Department of Energy, is promoting energy efficiency and sustainability, combating climate change and ensuring energy security and a healthy European energy market.
The delegates came directly from the Clean Energy Ministerial in San Francisco, an annual forum of the energy ministries of two dozen countries.
The visitors spoke with Argonne researchers working on clean energy, global security, smart cities, energy analysis and computing, and they toured the Mira supercomputer at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility and the transportation facilities in Buildings 362 and 371.
Šefčovič said the EU was interested in expanding its collaboration with Argonne, which began in earnest last year with the launch of the European Interoperability Center for Electric Vehicles and Smart Grids, a sister site to the U.S. Electric Vehicle-Smart Grid Interoperability Center at Argonne.
“This week, in the presence of Secretary Moniz and myself, an agreement was signed stating that we will collaborate further,” Šefčovič said. “I must say, today we discovered many more areas where we can work together — smart cities, renewable energy and energy storage, to name a few. So I am very glad that we came.”
Argonne researcher Henning Lohse-Busch (right) gives European Commission Vice President Maroš Šefčovič a tour of the Environmental Test Cell at Argonne’s Advanced Powertrain Research Facility.
“This is a collaboration that is built on 20 years of interaction, and four or five years of dedicated research, focused on vehicle transportation,” said Argonne Director Peter Littlewood. “But we’re now starting to think about more things that we can do together.”
Argonne researcher Henning Lohse-Busch (right) gives European Commission Vice President Maroš Šefčovič a tour of the Environmental Test Cell at Argonne’s Advanced Powertrain Research Facility.
“There’s a lot of interest, both in the U.S. and in Europe, in connected and autonomous vehicles and how that works in the smart city environment, as well smart cities themselves. So this is a great opportunity to build a new collaboration where we can set a path where the EU and the U.S. are using common standards and common frameworks,” he said.
Šefčovič named Argonne’s range of research and its rich history as qualities that attracted the interest of the EU.
Asked what Europe can learn from the U.S. approach and vice versa, he said he knew that Americans are studying how Europe has been able to quickly decouple the growth of the economy from greenhouse gas emissions.
“Since 1990, Europe’s economy has grown by 44%, and at the same time, we’ve managed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 24%,” he said. “So it’s a huge decoupling, and we now see it’s also taking place in the U.S..”
Argonne computer scientist Charlie Catlett gives the European Commission delegation a presentation about urban sciences and smart cities.
“Of course what we have to learn from the United States is this entrepreneurial spirit — the startup mentality that is really bringing lots of new innovations to the market, and especially that they can place it on the market much faster than we can in Europe,” he said. “We like how you are used to collaborating with outside groups, whether it’s industry using your facilities or your scientists talking challenges with other labs.”
Littlewood said he hopes to see more joint programs in the future.
“I really think there are a lot of opportunities where we can take existing ideas we have and build them out and growing programs that are actually global,” he said.
“Similarly, with connected and autonomous vehicles, because this is changing enormously, the world is changing very rapidly. We can be at the center of that, watch that change, help drive that change,” Littlewood said. “It isn’t all just the Google vehicle: it’s what happens on the roadside and how that’s integrated into the way things work, and that’s Argonne’s space.”
The delegation also included Vladimír Šucha, the Director-General of the Joint Research Center, the in-house scientific service of the European Commission (who tweeted about his visit); Fabrice Vareille, Minister Counselor-Head of Transport, Energy, Environment and Nuclear Affairs Section of the EU delegation to the United States; and two members of Šefčovič’s Cabinet of Vice-President for the Energy Union: Juraj Nociar, its head, and Manuel Szapiro, a member.