Eni has signed a framework collaboration agreement with Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) to work on accelerating the industrialization of fusion energy. The Italian major made its first investment in CFS in 2018 and is a major shareholder in the business, the company said in its statement.
According to Eni, this strategic agreement will leverage its global engineering and project management experience for a range of projects to support CFS and the development and deployment of industrial-scale fusion energy.
Eni was the first energy company to believe and invest in the merger, which could make an important contribution to the energy transition once it is developed at an industrial level, the company’s statement said.
According to Eni, CFS has the fastest path to the commercial deployment of fusion energy. In September 2021, the company achieved a major milestone with the successful test of its high-temperature superconducting magnet technology: the strongest magnet of its kind in the world, which will ensure plasma confinement in the magnetic fusion process and that has opened the way. to achieve clean energy from fusion in a future demonstration plant, Eni said.
Eni added that SPARC, projected to become the world’s first magnetic confinement pilot plant with net fusion energy production, is under construction and will be operational in 2025. SPARC will pave the way for ARC, the first plant commercial electric capable of supplying electricity. to the network, which is expected to be operational in the early 2030s.
“We will see the first CFS power plant based on magnetic confinement fusion at the beginning of the next decade, with almost two decades ahead to deploy the technology and meet the energy transition goals by 2050. Having this technology at an industrial level, providing large amounts of zero-carbon energy produced in a safe, clean and practically inexhaustible way will mean that we will contribute substantially to the challenge of the energy transition,” said Eni CEO Claudio Descalzi.
“The collaborative framework between CFS and our long-standing partner Eni has great potential to advance our efforts on key global challenges and opportunities to transform the energy landscape with an unlimited supply of energy from clean fusion,” said Bob Mumgaard, CEO of CFS. “This agreement highlights the key role existing energy companies play in accelerating the industrialization of fusion energy and the power of combining complementary organizations.”
In detail, the framework agreement aims to accelerate the industrial development of the ARC, as well as with a number of projects under development that could include operational and technological support, technological development, project execution through the sharing of learned methodologies of the energy industry, as well as relations with interested parties, Eni said in its statement.
For Eni, magnetic confinement fusion plays a central role among the technologies that can pave the way to decarbonization, as it will allow humanity to have a practically inexhaustible supply of energy without CO2 emissions, transforming the paradigm of the generation of energy forever, says the statement.
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