The HighEFF Scientific Committee is comprised of three national and three international experts. The mandate of the Scientific Committee is to provide advice on the relevance and quality of the scientific activities for the Centre as a whole, as well as the individual Research Areas. In addition, they will highlight scientific trends, challenges and opportunities, and comment on how HighEFF performs relative to state-of-the-art (whether HighEFF research is world class or not). They will further provide strategic advice on scientific focus and priorities based on the performance of the various Research Areas and Work Packages.

The members are:

• Robert C. (“Bob”) Armstrong, Director at MIT Energy Initiative
• Ignacio E. Grossmann (Former Director CAPD at CMU)
• Megan Jobson (Professor at Univ. of Manchester)
• Tor Grande (Vice Dean Research at NTNU)
• Jack A. Ødegård (Vice President Research at SINTEF Industry)
• Kristin Jordal (Research Manager at SINTEF Energy Research)

The vision of HighEFF strongly relies on creating good arenas for cooperation between industry, academia and research partners. Our vision is founded on the words of Professor Arne Bredesen, who stated that excellent research is best produced through three means: knowledge, friendship and teamwork. HighEFF will build upon and bridge these means through common goals, joint research and teamwork.

In addition to all the meetings for specific sectors, research areas, topics, activities or tasks, 2022 saw the following larger meeting places and workshop open for all partners:

• The Annual Consortium meeting was held on 18-20 May, and included the official opening of HighEFFLab and a special full-day seminar open to the general public, titled "Making Norwegian industry the world's greenest"
• The Cross-sector Workshop, highlighting communication and Centre results, and discussions about the research planned for the coming year, was held on 19-21 October

To ensure that all suggestions and input to research tasks are taken into consideration, the Scientific Coordinator has the overall overview of the Centre's progress.

Webinars

HighEFF organised a total of 15 webinars during the course of 2022. These were well attended live, and were also recorded to allow project partners who could not attend to view them later. Webinar topics were varied, but all related to increasing industrial energy efficiency.

Workshops

HighEFF was closely involved in a series of workshops about the energy crisis, organised by the Norwegian Academy of Technological Sciences in collaboration with FME NTRANS. Presentations by HighEFF scientists highlighted the potential of industrial energy efficiency measures to reduce overall energy needs.

Excess heat "agriclusters"

In May, HighEFF Research scientist Julian Straus (SINTEF) presented the concept of "agriclusters" at an event organised by the Sauda and Suldal municipalities. The idea is to use excess heat from the area's existing and future industry in food production: greenhouses, aquaculture, insect farming and production and drying of kelp, for example. The presentation was well-attended and well-received by participants.

Energy efficiency is central to the work of many other FMEs (Centres for Environment-friendly Energy Research), and we have a close collaboration with other centres on relevant topics. Here is an overview of our collaboration with other FMEs during the course of 2022.

• FME NTRANS: HighEFF participated in a workshop series about the energy crisis, jointly organised by FME NTRANS and the Norwegian Academy of Technological Science.

• FME ZEN: Collaboration on the topics of energy efficiency in buildings and integration into the energy system.

• FME NCCS: Collaboration in the generation and launch of spin-off projects (ADVENCCS).

• SFI Metal Production: Collaboration in the fields of energy intensive industry and metal production.
• Petrocenter LowEmission: Collaboration on energy efficiency in offshore oil and gas production.

Cooperation is important in order to achieve maximum impact. The different centres complement each other in many ways. In its final years, HighEFF will be cooperating with FME NTRANS on some policy briefs and position papers – in other words, a collaboration aiming at spreading our common message. This is in line with the guidelines laid out by the board of HighEFF.