Among the partners in the centre, there are several international universities and research institutions. This also holds for the vendor and end-user partners, as well as many of the Norwegian companies with considerable international activities. This ensures the necessary interaction and input required to focus activities on the challenges faced by industry and the energy system in the transition to a society with considerably lower greenhouse gas emissions.

In the academic cooperation, a concept of double PhDs and MSc studies has been established, meaning that NTNU and an international university both have students within related topics in order to ensure a close exchange and development of knowledge. Furthermore, many of the students have shorter or longer research exchange periods at a partner university. The Scientific Committee monitors the academic production in order to benchmark the activity in an international perspective, as well as giving advice for further scientific focus and direction.

In addition to bilateral cooperation between academic partners, HighEFF has also implemented dedicated cooperation between academic partners and industry partners. This may for instance happen between SINTEF, NTNU, an international university and a specific industrial partner.

International projects: Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe

The fllowing projects are spin-offs of HighEFF, resulting is involved in a series of international projects funded in whole or in part by the EU.

• Waste2Products: The goal of this project is to develop and demonstrate smarte and energy-efficient production technologies and processes for biobased materials and products.
• GreenCarb: This project aims to achieve energy-efficient climate control of greenhouses for increased productivity.
• SuMaFood (Era-Net BlueBio Cofund): Sustainable preservation of marine biomass for an improved food processing value chain. Drying technology from SINTEF's HighEFFLab will be used.
• ReHeat: Utilisation of excess heat from paper production, and upgrading of this heat with a Steam producing heat pump to process steam with a pressure of 5 barG. Capacity of 3-5 MW.
• Friendship: Integration of steam producing heat pumps to solar heat production.
• PREMA: Energy efficient, primary production of manganese ferroalloys through the application of novel energy systems in the drying and pre-heating of furnace feed materials (completed in 2022).
• TRINEFLEX: HighEFF partner SINTEF's part of this project involves demonstrating the potential of photovoltaic thermal hybrid solar collector technology in combination with a high temperature heat pump to reduce energy consumption in post-combustion carbon capture.
• Decagone: Demonstrator of industrial carbon-free power generation from ORC-based waste-heat-to-energy systems.

The following project has been subsidised through the GEOTHERMICA and JPP Smart Energy Systems Joint Call by the Research Council of Norway, the U.S. Department of Energy  and the Austrian Research Promotion Agency.

• FLXenabler: Flexible heat and cooling systems integrated with geothermal energy storage for decarbonised integrated energy systems.