Technical University of Denmark: Future ‘Power-to-Xperts’ can pave the way for new Danish business success story

There will be a huge need to educate future experts in Power-to-X, which is why the Pioneer Center CAPeX is investing heavily in accelerating the process by training more than 100 PhDs and postdocs and giving them access to the world’s leading researchers and equipment in this field.

Power-to-X is the key to unlocking the gigantic potential of green energy. So it was with great pleasure that DTU and Aalborg University in December announced the new Pioneer Center CAPeX, which will bring together leading experts and capacities in this field from the Danish universities and three international universities. The Pioneer Center has received a total of DKK 300 million in funding from five Danish foundations.

An important part of the center is the establishment of a CAPeX Academy, which will educate around 50 PhDs and 50 postdocs during the center’s 13-year life. Because, in the future, there will be a greater need to cultivate the ‘Power-to-Xperts’ of tomorrow, and they will espeially need multiple interdisciplinary competences.

“These are the experts who will carry the research forward, but also the industrial development in the new technologies to be developed for Power-to-X. And some of the competences that will be used over the next 10-20 years must be generated in a different way than we do today,” says Tejs Vegge, Professor at DTU and Lead of CAPeX.

As the Power-to-X industry begins to boom, there will be a need for a much larger number of experts in this field than there are today.

“If you look at the new materials and green technologies that we’re beginning to be able to develop now, they will need to be increased more than a thousandfold to have a global impact. This means that there must be researchers who can, for example, develop more efficient catalysts as well as people working in the industry who can produce them faster and cheaper, and on a completely different scale than today,” says Tejs Vegge.

And this is where education and improvement of skills and competences are absolutely essential.

“It isn’t enough to ‘simply’ design the world’s best catalyst—it’s also necessary to ensure sustainable and scalable production to meet global challenges. This requires new ways of thinking, and these are the type of experts we want to help train,” says Frede Blaabjerg, Professor at Aalborg University and Co-lead of CAPeX.

Potential for new Danish business success story
Educating future experts will help speed up research and development, and they often bring a new perspective.

“We’ve been working with these ideas for several years, and I can see that when new students arrive, big breakthroughs are made. They have a creative curiosity and open-mindedness that make them see things in new ways. So education is absolutely crucial for us to reach our goals,” says Tejs Vegge.

The potential of training 100 new experts in Power-to-X will also be reflected in the industry, predicts Tejs Vegge.

“There is a lot of talk about Denmark’s wind power success story, but if the green energy, Power-to-Xperts, and materials are available, then there may well be five to ten new companies in Power-to-X that could become the next Vestas or Topsøe,” he says.

Global lab
The CAPeX center is anchored in Denmark, but close collaboration with international universities — Stanford University, University of Toronto, and Utrecht University — can contribute to really speeding up the development. Here, CAPeX’s researchers and participants in the CAPeX Academy can acquire unique access to equipment and expertise in both Denmark and abroad.

“We can utilize each other’s infrastructure and competences in a new way. For example, some of our competent postdocs can create programs that can control a synthesis robot located in another country that makes some materials on which a group from a third country or laboratory can analyse the data and make new predictions,” says Tejs Vegge.

One of the goals of the CAPeX center is to accelerate the development of Power-to-X materials, making the process 5-10 times faster. Precisely this approach can also speed up the acquisition of knowledge.

“It means that you suddenly have a global laboratory and a huge number of techniques available on a scale unmatched by any other laboratory in the world,” says Tejs Vegge.

“It provides an opportunity to become a researcher or subsequently an industrial front runner as quickly as possible. The young researchers will have the opportunity to take their ideas to a level where they can be accelerated by the best researchers and the best infrastructure much faster than is typically possible.”

Lengthy stay at international university
When it comes to the green transition, it is important that the solutions extend beyond Denmark’s borders. Even if we expand the production of the green power we consume in Denmark, this constitutes a negligible part of the challenge we have to solve. Therefore, the global outlook has been incorporated in CAPeX Academy, where at least half of the PhDs and postdocs will be affiliated to a fellowship programme, comprising a lengthy stay at one of the international partner universities.

“If—as a PhD or postdoc—you come with your own funding and your own project and are there for a few weeks, you often don’t become an integral part of the research environment. But if you’re there long enough to form part of the daily routine and have a co-supervisor with the international host, you get a different dynamic,” says Tejs Vegge.

In addition, the international partner universities will also send PhDs and postdocs to Denmark on exchange stays, and Padraic Foley from University of Toronto is looking forward to this. He is Director of Strategy and Partnerships at University of Toronto’s global initiative Acceleration Consortium and is confident that their researchers and students can expand their skill sets and learn from their Danish partners.

“Educating the future scientific leaders in autonomous materials discovery depends critically on their access to the global network of experts. Programs like the CAPeX and Acceleration Consortium Fellowship Program provide a unique opportunity to establish and nurture these kinds of connections, where our PhDs and postdocs can spend extensive periods abroad and bring back new digital competences,” he says.

The first CAPeX PhD and postdoc positions are expected to be announced soon with a scheduled start in 2023, and hiring will subsequently be made on an ongoing basis. All the positions will be anchored at one of the Danish universities.