Text: Mette Kjelstad Høiseth
Photo: Kaja Korsnes Kristensen

SINTEF Energy Research is the coordinator of SUSPLAN which is a 3-year project in the EU's 7th Framework Programme. They are joined by 16 partners from 12 countries. 

The total budget is EUR 4.7 million (about NOK 38 million) and over NOK 8 million of this will go to SINTEF.

Developing guidelines
Both local and national decision makers influence the development of the energy systems in a region. The aim of the project is to develop harmonized and robust guidelines for decision makers in energy-related infrastructure and energy distribution regionally and nationally and transnationally. The guidelines will be made based on scenario studies in the 2030 to 2050 perspective.

Ready for new challenges
SINTEF Energy Research has worked on developing a model for planning investments in energy systems with multiple infrastructures. The SUSPLAN team was ready for new challenges and decided to apply their idea to an EU project.

They started by carefully studying the 6th Framework Programme then focused directly on the evaluation criteria in the 7th Framework Programme. This well-targeted work paid off for the research team at SINTEF Energy Research and senior researcher Bjørn Harald Bakken became the project coordinator.

Best project application
SUSPLAN was ranked top of all the project applications to the EU's Directorate for Energy and Transport (DG-TREN) in 2007. They got 14.5 points out of 15. Now the work to deliver the results is starting.

SUSPLAN - The project's kick-off was at a meeting in Brussels. Among the partners in the project is the research team from SINTEF Energy Research: Bjørn Harald Bakken and Ingeborg Graabak in the third row on the far left, Michael Belsnes to the left in the row behind and Hanne Sæle who is number two from the right in the second row.