Conectus - Industry

INDUSTRY

Superconductor Technology - a Key Competence of the 21st Century

Streams of information, energy, goods and people continue to steadily increase and will probably do so throughout the 21st century. At the same time we begin to face effects of the related global climate change which the ongoing growth of the world population will further enhance. Already today, the growth rates of energy consumption in rapidly developing countries like China or India are high. Energy is becoming increasingly expensive, and constraints with regard to environmental protection are becoming more stringent. The correlation between the electricity consumption and the prosperity of society on the one side, and the necessity for a sustainable and most efficient use of resources on the other, will continuously increase the demand for best practice solutions in electrical and electronic engineering. In this respect the ultimate performance of superconductor technology can provide enabling solutions to many current and future needs which are both economically important and environmentally desirable. System integration of superconductor technology could thus become one of the key competences of the 21st century.

Competitiveness of European Industry

The European industry related to superconductor technology which today means mostly small to medium size enterprises, has developed a strong position due to a continuous and sustained research and development policy from the 1970s to the 1990s. This strong position of European manufacturers is reflected in the EU market share which in the well established businesses is nearly half of the total world market today, and which to a good extent is a result of substantial funding for classical superconductors in the past.

Due to the publicly funded activities in the 1990s, European industries and research institutes have gained a highly competitive position also in the fields of new superconducting materials. Certainly the required efforts to bring these new materials to a cost-competitive level and to develop system integrated cryogenic solutions had been underestimated in the beginning. Since 2002 a significant reduction of funding is observed in Europe while the technology is strongly supported in the U.S.A. and East Asia where new technologies are considered as a cornerstone of social and economic development, and consequently the activities in Korea and China are strongly increasing.

Up to now, also in these new fields, which are based on new superconducting materials or new system designs, European companies are still able to obtain worldwide competitive results. For the future, however, even the anticipated significant market growth for superconductor technology will not be sufficient to allow industry to substantially subsidize the new fields alone. Cost-shared models, which have proven to be a viable funding tool in the past, are therefore also needed in the future to support and accelerate the development of novel technological and engineering approaches in new fields for superconductor technology.

It will be crucial to maintain existing expertise in cryogenics and superconductor technologies and to extend it into fields of future strategic importance. A coordinated activity on the European level will be necessary to keep Europe in the forefront of superconductor technology. Otherwise the European industry and research community is running the risk of falling off behind our global competitors.