Capenergies is the largest French cluster for competitiveness (non-profit organisation) dedicated to the energy transition, with around 514 members (SMEs, mid-caps, multinationals, research centres, universities, public local authorities, investors). The cluster has more than 10-years’ experience in promoting sustainable business growth and job creation by supporting its members to turn their ideas into tomorrow’s products and services to be released onto national and international markets, in three areas: sustainable low-carbon energy production, energy efficiency and smart energy management (smart grids and storage). The cluster offers its members individual advice and coaching in the following areas: access to public/private financing, international business growth, IP advice, skills needs. Since 2005, Capenergies’ has been able to support the scale-up of 577 innovative projects, whose 55% leveraged funds for almost €1 billion. The cluster covers the following geographical territories: Provence-Alpes-Côte-D’Azur Region, Principality of Monaco, as well as Corsica, Guadeloupe and Réunion islands. Finally, the cluster aims at supporting local authorities in developing and implementing energy transition strategies, as well as in deploying cost-effective demonstration projects and engaging citizens towards these projects. In the last 3 years, Capenergies has developed a solid experience in participating in 5 EU-funded projects (2 FP7 projects, 3 INTERREG projects). The cluster is also in the driving seat of the European S3P platform on smart grids.

The team dedicated to European projects is composed of 3 permanent full-time persons: Director, Project Manager and Project officer. They will supervise and carry out the project’s activities, with the support of the cluster’s whole team.

CAP will lead WP8 Business cases and exploitation strategies
Since its inception as competitiveness cluster dedicated to economic growth and value creation for its members, CAP supported the development and market uptake of more than 570 energy-related innovation projects. Therefore, CAP has long-standing technical expertise in the analysis of and advice on new technology opportunities against business models in the energy field. In its role, the cluster helps bridge the gap between new developments in energy technologies and their applications in ways fully meeting user needs. CAP has also a proven experience in leading multi-player programmes, providing guidelines to other partners and producing the expected deliverables according to the workplan of the project.

In the light of its mission, CAP can also rely on an extensive experience in IP advice. The IP Manager will be Mr Lucchese, Deputy Director of CAP with several years of experience in technology marketing and transfer, previously under the CEA and currently at CAP.

Capenergies will also lead the Task 7.4 Contributions to future networks development plan. Considering Capenergies’ expertise providing advice for public decision-makers on energy matters and with plans development, our institution is ideally positioned to lead this task.