Eni announces that Commonwealth Fusion Systems (Cfs), a company spin-out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology of which the oil group is the largest shareholder, has “successfully conducted the world‘s first test of the magnet with superconducting technology Hts (HighTemperature Superconductors) which will ensure the confinement of the plasma in the magnetic fusion process”.
The press release released by Eni explains that “magnetic confinement fusion, a technology never tested and applied at an industrial level until now, is a safe, sustainable and inexhaustible energy source that reproduces the principles through which the Sun generates its own energy, guaranteeing an enormous quantities with zero emissions and representing a turning point in the process of decarbonization ».
On the strength of the test results, Cfs confirms its own roadmap, which provides for the construction by 2025 of the first experimental plant with net energy production, called Sparc, and subsequently that of the first demonstration plant (Arc) capable of injecting fusion energy in the electricity grid which, according to the timetable, will be available in the next decade.
“The development of innovative technologies – comments Claudio Descalzi, CEO of the group in which Cdp holds 26% and the Treasury 4.4% – is one of the pillars on which Eni’s strategy is based, aimed at completely reducing industrial processes and products, as well as the key to a just and successful energy transition. For Eni, magnetic confinement fusion plays a central role in technological research aimed at the decarbonization path, as it will allow humanity to have large quantities of energy produced in a safe, clean and virtually inexhaustible way and without any gas emissions. greenhouse, forever changing the paradigm of energy generation and contributing to an epochal turning point in the direction of human progress and quality of life ».