First international meeting gathering our National Support Groups

The IETS TCP is the broadest of all 38 TCPs under the IEA Technology Collaboration Programme. To cover all industrial technology and system aspects, the IETS ExCo members seeks guidance from so called National Support Groups (NSGs) within each country. On 21 October, representatives from these national groups met online for a workshop.

In 2014 it was decided to have NSGs for networking nationally and internationally regarding IETS matters. These groups can be set up and work in different ways depending on national conditions. During the workshop, the NSGs had the opportunity to describe their organization and ways of working as well as discuss how this work could be improved.

Several ideas for more collaboration and wider dissemination of the IETS work and findings were suggested, the general feeling being that it is valuable to meet with NSGs from other countries with different structures for work within the IEA system.

“The National Support Groups are very valuable for the IETS work. It was good to meet with them and I think we can learn a lot from each other”, says Thore Berntsson, Chair of the IETS TCP.

The role of the IETS TCP National Support Groups in general is to

  • disseminate knowledge about IETS work to industry, researchers, institutes, etc. nationally,
  • improve national networking in IETS areas,
  • review suggestions for new Tasks to be started within the IETS TCP,
  • suggest new Tasks of national interest, and
  • contribute to the strategic development of IETS.