SINTEF Energi AS
SINTEF Energy Research is an institute for applied research dedicated to create innovative energy solutions.
ID: 298216447506-22
Lobbying Activity
Response to Revision of the EU’s energy security framework
13 Oct 2025
As a leading European research organization, SINTEF has expertise in energy systems, cybersecurity, critical infrastructure resilience, and risk analysis. Our report Towards an Energy-Secure and Resilient Society (August 2025), developed with Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and national partners, offers science-based recommendations to strengthen Europes energy security against emerging and intentional threats. Key Messages Address intentional and hybrid threats Recent incidents, including Nord Stream and attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure, show energy assets are increasingly targeted. Current architecture insufficiently address sabotage, cyberattacks, and hybrid warfare. The Commissions fitness check highlights insufficient readiness and gaps for multi-faceted threats. Independent analysis (SINTEF/NTNU, 2025) finds current methodologies fail to handle intentional, cascading and cross-sectoral threats. New design criteria, monitoring and recovery capabilities are urgently needed. The backdrop of war, warlike situations, sabotage and malicious acts has only slightly shaped calls for energy research and innovation in the civil sector, which must now build capacity accordingly. The framework should: - Include intentional threats in risk assessments, planning and design - Strengthen repair and recovery capacity via joint EU stockpiles, R&I, competence and rapid response - Promote continuous monitoring of critical infrastructure, including subsea assets Cross-sectoral and cross-border dependencies require integrated approaches Energy systems are interconnected with ICT, transport, water and defence. Disruptions in one sector can cascade across others. The framework should: - Promote integrated risk and vulnerability assessments across sectors and borders - Use simulation tools to analyse cascading effects - Align crisis levels and governance across electricity, gas, and hydrogen - Facilitate joint crisis exercises across sectors and Member States Build local and systemic resilience Local solutions (microgrids, energy communities) maintain critical functions during crises. The framework should: - Incentivise local storage and islanded operation in emergencies. - Support strategic stockpiling of key components and spare parts - Strengthen logistics and repair capacity, particularly for offshore and Arctic infrastructure Strengthen strategic autonomy through R&I Energy security increasingly depends on knowledge, foresight and technological capability. Integrate research and innovation as a permanent pillar of resilience policy to: - Ensure the next EU R&I Framework Programme focuses on energy resilience and intentional threats - Use R&I to enhance Europes autonomy in clean-energy and reduce dependencies - Improve data- and model-based risk analysis of clean-energy supply chains - Coordinate with the Critical Raw Materials Act and Net-Zero Industry Act to secure supply chains Recommendations for the Revised Framework Strengthen risk and resilience methodologies - Develop EU-wide methodologies for complex, intentional and cascading threats - Integrate resilience metrics into infrastructure planning and investments Enhance protection of critical infrastructure - Extend the Critical Entities Resilience Directive to include offshore and digital assets - Promote real-time monitoring and situational awareness for high-risk assets Support sector-coupled and flexible energy systems - Encourage integration of electricity, gas, hydrogen and heat networks to improve redundancy and flexibility - Develop Europe domestic energy assets and renewables to improve autonomy - Enable demand-side response and energy carrier switching - Establish joint planning and information mechanisms between civilian and defence sectors Revising the Framework is vital to address threats, interdependence, and energys strategic role in security and competiveness.
Read full responseResponse to Greenhouse gas emissions savings methodology for low-carbon fuels
24 Oct 2024
On behalf of SINTEF we would like to thank the Commission for the possibility to provide feedback to the methodology to determine the GHG emission savings of low-carbon fuels. The proposed methodology is comprehensive, and by intention aligned with parallel regulations for RFNBOs to ensure comparable evaluation of value chains for production of hydrogen and hydrogen-carriers. We would like to share our feedback to the following issues: 1)The upstream methane and CO2 emissions of fossil fuels and other raw materials should be those of the actual applied raw material, reflecting the resources used. The default value for upstream CO2 and methane emissions of natural gas should be adapted to the import patterns of natural gas and LNG, ensuring that it is higher than any natural gas likely to be imported to the EU. 2) We support the inclusion of cross boarder CCS value chains for transport and storage of CO2 (eCCS) as we believe this will ease the actual implementation of these infrastructures. 3) We emphasise that great care must be taken to ensure that CCU applications indeed fulfil the regulation and remains permanently chemically bound in a product so as to not enter the atmosphere under normal use of the product, [], for a period of at least several centuries. 4) Strongly encourage the Commission to pursue accurate monitoring of methane and hydrogen emissions to the atmosphere from the value chains to put additional incentive on ensuring lowest possible emissions. 5) We acknowledge the inherent challenges related to the use of electricity from the grid, and support the need for coherence among the different regulations for the use of this. 6) The GHG emission intensity is measured in gCO2,eq/MJfuel. Different fuels, and even the same fuels in different contexts, can have radically different efficiencies. The issue is therefore that, for the same task, you need significantly different amounts of energy and comparing emissions on an LHV MJ basis is giving an undesirable boost to low-efficiency technologies. A complete set of feedback is given in the attached file, including examples, research and findings.
Read full responseResponse to Ecodesign requirements for solid fuel local space heaters (review)
14 Dec 2023
Please find the feedback in the attached document.
Read full responseResponse to Carbon capture utilisation and storage deployment
30 Aug 2023
SINTEF Energy Research is an institute for applied research dedicated to creating innovative energy solutions. We offer cutting-edge expertise in Norway and internationally based on research that provides added-value solutions and services for our clients. SINTEF Energy Research is part of the SINTEF Group, which is one of Europe's largest independent contract research organisations. SINTEF is an independent, not-for-profit organisation. Our focus areas contribute towards the transition to and achievement of future, sustainable, energy systems. SINTEF Energy Research is the centre owner and host for the FME Norwegian CCS Research Centre (NCCS), a 60 MEUR, 8 years and international research cooperation on CO2 capture, transport and storage (CCS), co-financed by the Research Council of Norway, the industry, and research partners. EU CCUS Strategy: A Crucial Step towards CO2 Transport and Storage Infrastructure Expansion. The EU CCUS strategy that is currently under development is extremely needed and highly welcomed. We fully support the stated need for an accelerated development of a CO2 transport and storage infrastructure. The required upscaling in CCS capacity will need exponential growth in CO2 transport and storage capacity over the coming decades. Fostering Energy Transition through Research-Based Collaboration: European Centre of Excellence for Accelerated CCUS Development and Industry Partnership. Research-based knowledge contributes to accelerating the energy transition, including CCUS, and securing the necessary investments. Research also provides the necessary groundwork for making strategic decisions and effectively mitigating risks. To support CCUS development, we strongly recommend an agile and effective collaboration between research organisations, the business sector and the public, at both a national and EU level. To achieve this, we suggest establishing a European Centre of Excellence (ECoE) for CCUS, aiming for EUR 10 million in public funding annually, with additional funding from industry. The long-term commitment (eight years) of the Centre strengthens pre-competitive knowledge sharing among industry stakeholders and with the research sector. Furthermore, a European Centre of Excellence foster research excellence and pan-European collaboration. We suggest this initiative is funded by national research councils (the Berlin model) and the European commission. A Robust CO2 Storage Insurance Scheme: Enabling Safe and Permitted CO2 Storage Operations with Comprehensive Leakage Coverage. We suggest establishing a CO2 storage insurance scheme to enable storage operators without the capacity for self-insurance to achieve CO2 storage permittance. The insurance scheme would cover the worst-case scenarios for CO2 leakage, as required by the CCS Directive. This should be fully feasible, as the risk for such leakages is very small, particularly for storage under the seabed in the North Sea Basin. Furthermore, we encourage the EU and its Member states to collaborate closely to align as far as possible the requirements for financial security site operators must provide across Europe as well as the regulatory framework for handover of liability of stored CO2. Optimal Investment Decisions: Based on Technology Neutrality and Third-Party Access. Optimal decarbonisation investment options for the individual industrial plants in Europe will depend on a number of factors, including current or prospective infrastructures for, for example, electricity, hydrogen and CO2, as well as new industrial plants or technology integration into existing plants, and long-term perspectives for plant operations. We highly recommend that the individual companies are enabled to make optimal investment decisions, and that technology neutrality is a core value of the carbon management plan. Furthermore, we recommend ensuring that CCUS transport and storage infrastructure is based on third-party access.
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