A new pioneer centre for the development of materials and power-to-X technologies for the green transition. The centre brings together leading national and international researchers and receives a total grant of DKK 300 million from several Danish foundations.
A new pioneer center for the development of materials and technologies for power-to-X will accelerate the green transition. The Pioneer Center for Accelerating P2X Materials Discovery (CAPeX) will, among other activities, develop more efficient and robust materials to convert water and CO2 into sustainable fuels and chemicals using green power from wind turbines and solar cells.
The most efficient materials used today to produce hydrogen by means of electrolysis are based on rare minerals and earth elements. One of the most important tasks for CAPeX is to develop new sustainable catalysts for electrolysis that are scalable and can be used globally. Another major task is to provide sustainable solutions for, for example, heavy transport and air traffic which can be made so efficient and inexpensive that they can deliver serious contributions to the green transition.
“To significantly progress a complex area such as power-to-X, collaboration across disciplines is needed. Therefore, the research in CAPeX will join forces of different fields, e.g., materials science, energy conversion, and data science. Such interdisciplinary collaboration is a prerequisite to accelerate the development within the new methods and materials which we need for the green transformation of society,” says Lene Oddershede, Senior Vice President, Natural & Technical Sciences, Novo Nordisk Foundation.
Bringing together leading experts and competencies
CAPeX brings together leading experts and competences from across the Danish universities and three international consortia and will be led in a collaboration between Technical University of Denmark (DTU) and Aalborg University.
“The climate crisis is an urgent global challenge that requires a radically new approach to the development of materials if we’re to have new green technologies ready in time. The task exceeds what the individual researcher, the individual laboratory, or the individual country can solve. Therefore, we want to create a concept and a platform for a completely new interdisciplinary way of working together nationally and internationally. We do this through a number of activities, including by creating online access to data, computers, and equipment in different laboratories, so that we can share and use data from all parts of the development process as efficiently as possible,” says Tejs Vegge, Professor at DTU and Head of CAPeX.
Professor Frede Blaabjerg from Aalborg University is co-lead in CAPeX, and heads the development of a so-called digital twin, where researchers in a virtual universe can design, test, and analyse new materials, cells, and systems before they are manufactured.
More information about CAPeX
The Pioneer Center for Accelerating P2X Materials Discovery (CAPeX) is the third Pioneer Centre initiated by the Ministry of Higher Education and Science.
In CAPeX, researchers from DTU, AAU, the University of Copenhagen, Aarhus University, and the University of Southern Denmark will create a ground-breaking interdisciplinary environment for Power-to-X technology in collaboration with international partners from Stanford University, Utrecht University, and University of Toronto.
CAPeX is established in close collaboration between (and with co-funding from) the Ministry of Higher Education and Science, Danish National Research Foundation, the Carlsberg Foundation, the Lundbeck Foundation, VILLUM FONDEN, the Novo Nordisk Foundation and the participating universities.
A total of DKK 300 million has been allocated to the centre over the next 13 years. The Novo Nordisk Foundation has granted DKK 48.5 million of the total amount.
Find more information about the new pioneer centre on the CAPeX website.
Further information
Press-related enquiries:
Sabina Askholm Larsen, Communications Partner, +45 2367 3226, [email protected]
Academic enquiries related to CAPeX:
Tejs Vegge, Professor, DTU, +4551641787, [email protected] or
Frede Blaabjerg, Professor, Aalborg University, +4521292454, [email protected]
