Put forward by the European Commission in November 2007, the European Strategic Energy Technology (SET) Plan aims to accelerate energy technology development. It identifies a series of key technologies where barriers, the scale of the investment and risk are better tackled collectively over the next ten years.

Key challenges are seen in terms of meeting the 2020 environmental-energy targets, but also the 2050 ambition of reducing green house gas emissions by 60%-80%. For 2020, this means making sustainable 'second generation' biofuels as competitive alternatives to fossil fuels; enabling commercial use of technologies for CO ₂ capture, transport and storage; doubling the power generation capacity of the largest wind turbines, with off-shore wind as the lead application; and demonstrating the commercial readiness of large-scale photovoltaic (PV) and concentrated solar power.

Other SET goals for 2020 are enabling a single, smart European electricity grid able to accommodate the massive integration of renewable and decentralised energy sources; bringing to mass market more efficient energy conversion and end-use devices and systems in buildings, transport and industry, such as poly-generation and fuel cells; maintaining competitiveness in fission technologies, together with long-term waste management solutions.

Technologies for 2050

Technologies listed for 2050 that require funding over the next ten years are next generation renewables; cost-efficient energy storage; hydrogen fuel cell vehicles; a new generation (Gen-IV) of fission reactors; ITER fusion facility; trans-European energy networks; breakthrough research on energy efficiency, eg materials, nanoscience, information and communication technologies, bioscience and computation.