Competitiveness clusters specialized in Mediterranean energy
A genuine energy partnership between North and South Mediterranean must be accompanied by a vast regional project on research training and development, involving industrials, training institutes and laboratories. Due to the increased use of innovative technologies, development of large regional projects in energy infrastructure, and economic constraints inherent to new technological procedures, research centres and industrials tend to pool their skills by regrouping into clusters or competitiveness clusters. The current growth of training centres and competitiveness clusters in the region creates essential axes of development to respond to the energy issues of the future.
A competitiveness cluster is a combination of companies, training centres, and public and private research centres in a geographic area, all of which engage in common projects in an innovative manner.
These partnerships are most commonly organized around a market and a chosen technological or scientific field, and can be regional, national or global.
In the Mediterranean energy sector, few specialized competitiveness clusters have seen the day. The majority of them have developed in countries to the North, mainly Spain, France and Italy.
More often than not, these structures are the result of national policies seeking to stimulate a local area and open it up to an international market. Several clusters resulting from private initiatives have, however, emerged in the region.
Two factors justify the development of competitiveness clusters in the Mediterranean energy sector :
-significant growth in the energy sector during the next decades
-numerous assets in the renewable energy sector, particularly wind and solar power
- develop a general Mediterranean vision for the creation of clusters which could initiate partnerships in research, training and industrial production in the energy sector.
- develop pooling of expertise between Mediterranean clusters on joint projects, in the fields of research, expert networking and partnerships between industrials.
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