UNEXUP e-meeting – WP0 & WP1 workshop

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On March 24th-26th, the LPRC team participated in an UNEXUP three-day consortium e-meeting, which was held via teleconferencing due to the quarantine measures of the current COVID-19 pandemic in Europe. In this opportunity, partners responsible for the commercialization strategy and technological developments presented the current progress and the work plan for the next months, followed by discussions and questions raised by the whole consortium.

In the technological scope, the presentations were about the upscaling of the current UX-1 robotic platform – built during the UNEXMIN project, as well as the future development of an additional robot that will be added to the platform, which will be able to accomplish even more challenging missions, with improved hardware, software and overall capabilities.

UNEXMIN GeoRobotics Ltd. and LPRC made presentations for the commercialization / business plan section of the e-meeting. The LPRC presentation covered the Go-To-Market strategy, mentioning the PDAC 2020 findings, where LPRC was present to make a brief market assessment by dialoguing with UNEXUP’s potential clients in order to understand their expectations and needs from the service. This input is valuable to provide the necessary tools to develop a solid business plan for the UNEXUP exploration/ mine mapping service.

LPRC is the leader of the communication and dissemination Work Package (WP4) in UNEXUP, also taking part in the Go-To-Market strategy (WP0), by contributing with customers’ relations and analysis.

CROWDTHERMAL e-meeting

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Last week, on the 17 and 18 March, the CROWDTHERMAL partners held their second consortium meeting online due to the events of COVID-19 – the meeting was previously scheduled to be hosted in the Canary Islands. Due to the circumstances the consortium had to adapt and work around the impossibility of a face-to-face meeting.

This CROWDTHERMAL workshop led to outstanding preliminary results particularly for Work Packages 1, 2 and 3, which are currently running.  Work Package 1 focuses on studying the bottlenecks linked to geothermal energy. For that matter, IZES presented its preliminary results including D1.1 “International Review of Public perception studies”. Among the bottlenecks identified were: 1) trust in the technology and 2) perception of risks and legislative background. These results will later on feed into the Social License to Operate (SLO) which is at the centre of the CROWDTHERMAL project. A Social License to Operate refers to the ongoing acceptance of a company or industry’s standard business practices and operating procedures by its employees, stakeholders, and the general public.

Work Package 2 delivered an overview of the best practices in Europe regarding geothermal which will be a crucial document for any upcoming geothermal project mixing geothermal energy and crowdfunding. Work Package 3 unveiled its report on mitigation risks linked to geothermal energy. As pointed out by Work Package 1, risk mitigation is an important step to build trust in the technology and thus having an effective Social License to operate. The results of the questionnaire help to understand and to deal with risk mitigation for all case studies of CROWDTHERMAL (Spain, Iceland and Hungary). In addition, WP3 created a cluster of geothermal stakeholders in order to discuss an analysis for geothermal risk mitigation in the context of alternative financing schemes. The cluster identified a glaring lack of a pan-European exploration risk mitigation scheme.

As for WP4, which La Palma Research Centre leads, the team kickstarted the organisation of a social media powered platform that will support the deployment of integrated development schemes for geothermal energy utilising alternative finance and community engagement tools. Thanks to the synergic approach of the consortium, this platform will be launched in due time early 2021.

Stay tuned for more news regarding the CROWDTHERMAL project!

La Palma Research Centre

LPRC at PDAC 2020

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LPRC member Luís Lopes was present at the most recent PDAC convention, held every year in Toronto, Canada. Luís represented the UNEXUP project, where LPRC, besides leading and doing major work for dissemination and communication, is involved in market research and customer involvement. It was to this last topic that the representation at PDAC 2020 was dedicated.

From the 1st to 4th of March, LPRC introduced and discussed the project development prospects, its line of work and uniqueness to a list of stakeholders that included governments, public authorities and private companies, such as mining companies and technology developers. The aim was to raise commercial awareness in the technology and understand how the possible future customers see the market value and prospects of the UNEXUP technology. Market research is a big part of UNEXUP and will be considered throughout the project.

LPRC’s work at PDAC will now be processed and the results will feed into the UNEXUP project’s Work Package dedicated to market uptake.

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